Echo The Diamond sees Margaret Glaspy recapture her prickly, bluesy magic

It's a chance to find untapped potential. Sometimes, though, you end up with an odd-coloured liquid and a smell you can’t get out of your lab coat. When things don’t turn out quite right, there’s something refreshing about not forcing it and just going back to what works. Margaret Glaspy seems to have done just that.

After crafting a tight, blues-rock debut in Emotions and Math, the New York songwriter ditched guitars, the thing that powered her debut, for synths. Follow-up Devotion felt unsure of itself. Not quite wanting to commit to this new electronic world, but too far away from the old one to seek comfort. It ended up a muddled record lost in a sea of dull.

Thankfully, on her third record, Echo The Diamond, she’s ditched the synths and dusted off the guitar – going back to what works. Because it’s here where Glaspy is most powerful. From the off, Echo The Diamond feels as self-assured as her debut, even if her lyrics reveal someone racked with anxieties.

Rollicking opener “Act Natural” and fuzzy slow burner “Irish Goodbye” both paint a portrait of someone unsure how to move through life. Whether she’s figuring out how to play it cool in the face of someone mesmerising (“Is this some kind of butterfly rebirth / Are you from this Earth?”) or trying to survive social encounters. It all reaches its heights on “Hammer And The Nail”, a beautifully aching torch song full of indecision.

Much like in Emotions and Math, Glaspy is brutally honest but deeply empathetic. There are very few neat endings for her characters. But what she does give them is a path to follow. “Female Brain”, Glaspy’s shot at her male-dominated industry, doesn’t offer a finite solution. It instead offers a rousing rallying cry to continue the fight. To make the most of her “gorgeous female brain”.

Devotion’s misguided stylistic detour seems all but forgotten. Echo The Diamond recaptures what made Margaret Glaspy so exciting. Her sense of drama is thrilling, and its quietest moments find the beauty in her raw, prickly vocals.