exystence club

…CD edition features the Bob Dylan cover “In the Summertime”.
Margaret Glaspy’s latest album, I Am Both, is a low-key masterwork of observational wisdom, lilting melodies, and sharp wit. She delivers her stinging lines with a conversational ease, wielding the authority of hard-won experience over ringing guitar licks that echo the guilelessness of her storytelling. Her intimacy compels us to immediately identify with the singer, even when she is singing about people other than herself.
…On songs such as the dreamy “Common Ground” and the more somber “Petty”, the singer bites off lyrics about mutual disappointments. She keeps the lyrics simple to show how basic and trivial spitefulness can be, and at the same…

You probably know Margaret Glaspy as a songwriter, first and foremost. Over three albums, the one-time Texas Fiddle championship contender and current indie folk rock icon has developed a reputation for sharp guitar work, prickly melodies and lyrical penchant for what NPR’s Ken Tucker calls “complexity that unfurls with deceptive directness.” And yet, she’s also an adept interpreter and an agile collaborator, as this seven-song covers EP demonstrates.
These songs all come from the Americana wing of popular music, not country exactly, but infused with that storytelling sensibility. “The Book of Love,” one of the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, is, perhaps, the most urbane, puncturing sentimentality with sly lines like…