Left without a voice for seven years due to illness, the American finally returns to singing on a hushed album of relearning.
Singing. At first glance, the title might invite a smile, for being a touch too literal. But for Gia Margaret, it sounds like a reclaiming: that of an intimate territory left fallow since the superb There’s Always a Glimmer (2018).
This debut album with its hazy edges, discovered while wandering Bandcamp, was followed by an illness that forced her to give up singing in favor of instrumental work on Mia Gargaret (2020) and Romantic Piano (2023).
There is in these twelve songs something fragile yet resolved
Seven years later, Singing is not a triumphant return, but a subdued reappearance, almost hesitant, where every note seems weighed. There is in these twelve songs something fragile yet resolved, as if singing has become a nearly combative act. Gia Margaret does not overplay anything: she brushes. Her fluffy “sleep rock” finds here a form of purity, a delicate balance between retreat and presence.
In the background, the pieces are threaded with a sense of strangeness and distance from the world—noticeable on Everyone around Me Dancing, Alive Inside or E-Motion.
Gia Margaret turns isolation into a refuge and silence into raw material. Surrounded by a swarm of collaborators (Kurt Vile, David Bazan, Sean Carey…), she wavers between ambient textures, spare folk, and digital melancholy, never quite committing to one vibe.
Singing isn’t merely a comeback record but a process of relearning: a artist rediscovering her voice – sometimes aided by a welcome Auto-Tune veil – and choosing each word as a quiet victory.
Singing (Jagjaguwar/Modulor). Out on April 24. In concert at Archipel, Paris, on September 12.
