Margaret Glaspy's 'I Am Both' Strips Everything Back and Says More
Margaret Glaspy’s fourth album, I Am Both, is a deliberate turn away from the guitar-heavy attack of 2023’s Echo the Diamond. Produced by Joe Henry with a stripped-down lineup — Glaspy on guitar, Patrick Warren on keyboards, Jay Bellerose on drums, and Ross Gallagher on bass — the record trades volume for precision, examining the small frictions of relationships (hurt feelings, bad timing, selfish impulses) with a directness that No Depression called “a masterpiece of simplicity and directness.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Bellerose’s drums and Gallagher’s bass stay conversational rather than propulsive throughout, giving Glaspy’s vocal the kind of room a four-piece rarely affords a singer — nothing here is fighting for space.
The Spatial Dynamics: Warren’s keyboard work fills in exactly where a second guitar might have crowded the arrangement, adding color without adding clutter — Henry’s production keeps the whole thing uncluttered enough that every lyric lands at full weight.
Standout Performance
Glaspy’s voice is doing the heavy lifting on this record, and the songwriting rewards the close listen — her lyrics, as one review put it, “rigorously avoid obvious paths,” finding an undercurrent of tension inside melodies that could easily have settled for pretty.
Why It’s Certified
What makes I Am Both work is the discipline of it — four musicians, one producer, and songs willing to sit inside discomfort rather than resolve it too quickly. It’s Glaspy’s most emotionally legible record without becoming her most simplistic one, and that balance is genuinely hard to pull off. Certified great.