Margaret Glaspy

Margaret Glaspy’s new EP The Sun Doesn’t Think (ATO) marks the follow up to last year’s critically acclaimed album Echo The Diamond which drew attention from the likes of The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, among many others.

“While I was on tour for Echo The Diamond, I was writing this EP.” Glaspy says of the origins of the The Sun Doesn’t Think material. “I was inspired by just being around audiences and experiencing their charisma and their stories. It made me want to bring more music to them and release records closer to their inception.”

Seizing the moment, Glaspy hit the studio on her own terms. “The simplicity of making this reminded me of why I make music. I took my acoustic guitar into the studio in March, played new songs in front of a microphone, and The Sun Doesnt Think was born in a couple of days,” she says of the EP, which was engineered by Mark Goodell at his studio Joe’s Garage and draws inspiration from such varied artists as Tom Waits, Kim Gordon and author Neil Gaiman’s “dark but fantastical and surrealist places.” Of her own writing process she stated, “These days I feel my heart and mind transport to other places when I write – these songs came from either the countryside or the deep night in a lonesome city.”

Of the lead track “24/7”, Glaspy says “This song represents my attempt to understand how the threads of my childhood have woven the adult costume that I wear. I started to see that my beliefs about love and life had not evolved since I was a child and it had a pretty direct link to my own sense of worry and anxiety.” She added , “I love being an adult – with it comes the opportunity to connect your own dots.

The EP is rounded out by four other songs including “Will You Be My Man” which centers around a heroine in Glaspy’s mind that defies all expectations, and “Bathtub” – a song that she says “feels related to the inner dialogue of an artist at times – feeling stumped or challenged, and questioning your own work, ‘I don’t know why I try.”

2023 saw Margaret Glaspy release her third full-length album Echo The Diamond via ATO Records. The LP emerged from a deliberate stripping-away of artifice to reveal life for all its harsh truths and ineffable beauty. Like the precious gem of its title, the result is an object of startling luminosity, one capable of cutting through the most elaborately constructed façades. The albums’ singles “Act Natural,” “Memories,” and “Get Back” saw support from The New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Spin, and others. “Act Natural” reached the top 20 single at AAA Radio, marking Glaspy’s highest chart position of her career. The album was labeled a “notable release of the week” by both NPR and American Songwriter and Pitchfork included it in their “8 New Albums You Should Listen To” list around release and The New York Times’ Jon Pareles included “Memories” in his in Best Songs of 2023 list noting “Over a waltz of simple guitar chords, Margaret Glaspy blurts out unvarnished grief in a torn voice, bereft yet struggling to go on.”