GIA MARGARET - Singing

A debut that was hastily filed away as just another pleasant chapter of female singer-songwriting, “There’s Always Glimmer”, a vocal cord injury, and two instrumental albums closer to dream-pop strategies with a neoclassical bent, the excellent “Romantic Piano”, and now a return to the song format after recovering her voice: that, in short, is the artistic story of American singer-songwriter Gia Margaret. So it's no accident that this album is titled “Singing”: the Chicago artist has rediscovered the poetic intensity of words, while in the meantime refining her sonic structures until her compositions have become a whisper, a murmur. Gia Margaret once again turns her gaze to dreams, but the perspective has shifted, not far from the innovative alt-folk impulses of Bon Iver (“A Little Inside”), and just as evocative as a ghostly version of Angel Olsen (“E-Motion”).

Listening to “Singing”, it's easier to pick up echoes of David Sylvian (listen closely to the intense “Everyone Around Me Dancing”, graced by the evocative trumpet of Norwegian jazz musician Arve Henriksen) or predictable traces of the magical instrumental haze of her previous two records (“Guitar Duo”, “Rotten Outro”).

The tone remains intimate, the melodies and voice are simultaneously crystalline and dreamlike, and it's impossible to remain indifferent to the artist's rediscovered urge to sing: you can feel it in the fragile lilt of “Alive Inside” and in the ethereal yet denser “Moon Not Mine”, while the layered instrumentation is equally refined but also fragile and evanescent.

This incurable duality between words and music is a source of both delight and deception. “Singing” is like a two-faced Janus: the gaze toward the past (the acoustic oasis of “Rotten”) and the one toward the future (the almost-too-playful “Good Friend”) sometimes seem to clash, but as with any good story worth rereading, there's far more going on than a first, fleeting listen might suggest.

There are many dissonant signals to catch in “Singing” — the disorienting fade-out at the end of “Cellular Reverse”, the crackle of a modem in “Phone Screen”, and the heartfelt tribute to Japanese artist Ichiko Aoba in “Ambient For Ichiko” — what matters is not letting yourself be distracted by the hurried pace at which new releases are consumed these days. There's a lot to ponder and savor in Gia Margaret's new album.

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18/05/2026