Margaret Glaspy at Brighton Music Hall

Margaret Glaspy took center stage at Brighton Music Hall Friday night and whisked the audience away on a musical journey of self-exploration and recounting life’s tales. Glaspy explains that the majority of her discography tells the vicarious story of a fictional girl. Her story is like many of ours: experiences of family, home, friendship, love, and heartbreak.

You could feel all of this emotion and more emanate from Glaspy as she sang, basking under the orange stage lights. Fans quietly whispered lyrics, not wanting to disrupt her rich vocals, folky guitar picking, or Bob Dylan-esque harmonica work. Between songs, Glaspy shared anecdotes from her time as a young adult living in Boston, playing local venues (shoutout Cantab), and exploring the city. This performance felt personal and special, not just for her, but for those mesmerized by her warm timbre and the tangerine glow. 

Originally from rural Northern California, Glaspy took up the fiddle in the third grade, but became more curious about folk music, writing songs, and guitar in high school. She got a grant to come to Berklee School of Music here in Boston, and while it only lasted a semester, she dug her feet into the Boston music scene. After staying here for three years and establishing a name for herself, she took her talents to New York City, where she self-released an album and eventually got signed by ATO Records in 2016. Her debut studio record, Emotions and Math, is a collection of folky-grunge songs deeply reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's Blues. 

In an age of distraction and dissonance, Margaret Glaspy's new record, I Am Both, offers a break in the noise and chooses to be something more substantial. New-York based singer/songerwriter tackles the idea of embracing one’s own complexities, a theme that runs throughout the 11 tracks. Taking a break from social media to write this album, Glaspy wrote on a typewriter, creating vignettes and self-exploration pieces that offer empathic eyes to the world around her. Emerging from a three-day recording session at Reservoir Studios, I Am Both paints an intimate narrative about Glaspy’s fervent refusal to let outside forces impact her multidimensionality.