Singing

Description

Every artist must find their voice. Gia Margaret only found hers after losing it. A victim of a vocal cord injury that prevented her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of a complex and intimate form of ambient music, initiated by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. Today, with her healed voice and sharpened artistic voice, she comes full circle with Singing, her first album featuring vocals since There's Always Glimmer in 2018. Supported by gentle piano lines that delicately rest on glass, the music of Singing reflects the same craftsman-like sensitivity she developed in silence. "There was a time when I didn't know if I would ever sing again. So, once healed, I felt a strong inner pressure to come back with a bang," Margaret confides. "I no longer knew who I was. It was like a new beginning, a reconnection with very old parts of myself." This feeling of alienation and rediscovery is palpable throughout the album. In the opening track, "Everyone Around Me Dancing," she observes a party from a distance, aware that her body prevents her from sharing in the collective joy while offering her new forms of self-knowledge. Excluded from the scene, she is "closer to the ground, to the planet." In "Alive Inside," she is so far from the source that she prays to anyone who might hear her ("a god, a lost friend, a spirit"). As her voice rises, she seems trapped in a web of distortion; it’s as if, in her quest, she is pushing the very limits of language. Singing was partly recorded in London with Guy Sigsworth of Frou Frou, who helped Margaret unify the multitude of ideas she had for "Good Friend," a standout track on the album that includes Gregorian chants from ILA and turntable scratches. David Bazan and Amy Millan also make appearances, as do Kurt Vile and Sean Carey, while Doug Saltzman, a long-time collaborator of Margaret, plays and co-produces much of the album. Deb Talan, former member of The Weepies, lends her voice, piano, and guitar to the final – and definitive – track of the album, "E-Motion." Gia Margaret sings endlessly. Every note of this album is a warm requiem for her past lives; each layer brings her future to life. Throughout the album, she applies the lessons of silence, those almost rational ways of communicating without speaking, the way an amorphous sound can cut straight to the heart of things like a scalpel, and to her own artistic voice.