Gia Margaret is on tour s i n g i n g with Brendan Eder Ensemble

Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didnt find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018s Theres Always Glimmer. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath onglass, the music on Singing evidences the same jewelers sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.There was a time when I really didnt know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong, Margaret says. I didnt know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself. This feeling of intermixed alienation and rediscovery is palpable across the album. In opener Everyone Around Me Dancing, she watches a party from the wings, aware of how her body keeps her from communal joy while also providing new modes of self-knowledge. Shut out from the scene, she is closer to the ground, theplanet. In Alive Inside, shes so far away from the source that shes praying to whoever might hear (a god, a friend thats gone, a spirit). As her voice rises, it seems to be trapped in a web of distortion; its as if in her pursuit, shes pushing at the very boundaries of what can be said.The process of making Singing was one of learning how to trust each of those feelings. The album was partially recorded in London with Frou Frous Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify the spree of ideas she had for Good Friend, an album highlight that includes Gregorian chant by ILA and turntable scratches, among many other things. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Margarets longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record. Deb Talan, previously of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the albums closingand definitivestatement, E-Motion.Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Across the album, she applies the lessons of speechlessnessthe quasirational ways we communicate without communicating, the way formless sound can cut to the heart of things like a scalpelto her own artistic voice.

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