Margaret Glaspy – That Rose
On August 7, singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy will release her new album, I Am Both, via ATO Records.
Known for her unflinching emotional honesty and commanding guitar work, Glaspy conceived the album after stepping away from social media, rediscovering a clarity of mind and creative momentum as she reconnected with her songwriting. Produced by three-time GRAMMY winner Joe Henry (Aimee Mann, Joan Baez), the LP finds Glaspy embracing complexity, contradiction, and emotional directness in equal measure. Today she teases the album with new single “That Rose.”
On the wildly romantic song Glaspy spins distanced longing into something gloriously surreal (“I dreamt you looked into the clouds like they were my eyes / You made them blush—the clouds got shy”) and she says, “Songwriting feels like running down a mountain for me, There are lots of snap decisions to be made so that you don’t break your legs. This song felt like that to make. Once I started it just kept picking up pace and I had to bob and weave so as not to fuck it up. It had a life and a mind of its own.”
Glaspy previously shared the album’s “Michigan” which saw support from Stereogum, Consequence, Brooklyn Vegan, Under The Radar, and more.
Glaspy continues to build a body of work that has positioned her among indie rock’s most celebrated songwriters. “Act Natural” the single off her last full-length Echo The Diamond – became the highest-charting AAA radio single of her career and most recently, legendary critic Robert Christgau selected her EP The Golden Heart Protector as the #1 album of 2025 so far on his annual Dean’s List Substack.
Her fourth full-length album, I Am Both emerged from live sessions at New York City’s Reservoir Studios alongside drummer/percussionist Jay Bellerose (Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), keyboardist Patrick Warren (Tracy Chapman, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen), and bassist Ross Gallagher (Paula Cole, Grails). Written largely in longhand and later refined on a typewriter, I Am Both Glaspy offers an ardent refusal of any outside pressure to compromise her multidimensionality. “I wrote the title track a while ago; the story is based on a female character that I look up to deeply—a woman who contains multitudes while seeing reality very clearly,” says Glaspy. “It can feel safer to try to fit myself into a category, but I find that embracing my own complexity is much healthier for me.” That embrace of complexity runs throughout the album’s eleven tracks.
“When I started writing for this record I had a goal of getting my practice back – to walk the walk in terms of how I envision myself as a songwriter,” says Glaspy, a Northern California-bred artist who made her debut with 2016’s lavishly acclaimed Emotions and Math. “At first it was really hard to break that addiction to social media, but after a while something shifted. It felt like I’d gotten back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions. It was life-changing.”
The follow-up to 2023’s Echo the Diamond (hailed by Uncut as “songs that glint like shards of glass yet brim with love, grief, courage, existential doubt and all the stuff that makes us human”), I Am Both brings Glaspy’s disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work to a cathartic form of folk-leaning indie-rock. And like today’s single “Michigan,” a number of songs on I Am Both unfold as finely detailed story fragments that privilege impression over exposition, each one etched with a precise emotional truth.
Ultimately, I Am Both finds Glaspy embracing a more grounded and deeply personal vision of songwriting – one rooted less in expectation or ambition than in connection, instinct, and emotional truth. “In any industry, success is measured by climbing as high as you possibly can, but these days I think of music as something more like a public service,” she says. “You show up in city after city and you bring the music with you, and hopefully it reaches whoever needs to hear it. I feel really honored to be of service in that way.”
She will support I Am Both with a tour that takes her across North America, The UK and Europe this Fall. The dates kick off on September 11 in Minneapolis, MN and conclude in Sellersville, PA on December 12. Along the way she will stop in Brooklyn for a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on September 25 and at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on November 17.
Margaret Glaspy tour dates
9/11 — Fine Line — Minneapolis, MN
9/12 — Vivarium — Milwaukee, WI
9/13 — Evanston Folk Fest — Evanston, IL
9/14 — The Ark — Ann Arbor, MI
9/16 — Mod Club — Toronto, ON
9/17 — Beachland Ballroom — Cleveland, OH
9/18 — Mr. Smalls — Pittsburgh, PA
9/21 — Eddie’s Attic — Atlanta, GA
9/22 — Cat’s Cradle — Carrboro, NC
9/24 — Iron Horse — Northampton, MA
9/25 — Brighton Music Hall — Boston, MA
9/26 — Music Hall of Williamsburg — Brooklyn, NY
10/9 — Prachtwerk — Berlin, Germany
10/11 — TivoliVredenburg (Club Nine) — Utrecht, Netherlands
10/12 — Witloof Bar — Brussels, Belgium
10/14 — L’Archipel — Paris, France
10/16 — St Matthias Church — London, UK
10/17 — Halle St. Michael’s — Manchester, UK
10/18 — St. Luke’s — Glasgow, UK
10/20 — Lantern Hall — Bristol, UK
10/21 — Howard Assembly Room — Leeds, UK
10/22 — Kitchen Garden Cafe — Birmingham, UK
10/23 — Boia Festival @ Tabernacle — St Davids, UK
10/26 — Cyprus Avenue — Cork, Ireland
10/27 — Upstairs at Dolan’s — Limerick, Ireland
10/28 — The Deer’s Head — Belfast, Ireland
11/4 — Off Broadway — St. Louis, MO
11/5 — Bottleneck — Lawrence, KS
11/7 — Ophelia’s — Denver, CO
11/9 — Urban Lounge — Salt Lake City, UT
11/10 — Shrine Basement — Boise, ID
11/12 — Tractor Tavern — Seattle, WA
11/13 — Biltmore Cabaret — Vancouver, BC
11/14 — Mississippi Studios — Portland, OR
11/16 — The Chapel — San Francisco, CA
11/17 — Troubadour — Los Angeles, CA
11/20 — The 04 Center — Austin, TX
11/21 — The Kessler Theater — Dallas, TX
12/11 — The Atlantis — Washington, DC
12/12 — Sellersville Theater — Sellersville, PA
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