Denise Glover Shares New Single ‘Precarity’ From ‘Mercy In This Land’
Seattle-based Americana artist Denise Glover has shared ‘Precarity’, the new single from her forthcoming fourth album ‘Mercy In This Land’.
Glover comes to songwriting with a rather particular eye. Alongside her work as a singer, guitarist and songwriter, she is also an anthropologist, and that way of looking closely at people, places and social structures runs through the new record. ‘Mercy In This Land’ is built around questions of belonging, movement, privilege and survival in modern America, but it never comes across as preachy. The songs keep close to the folk and country tradition, where a plain line can sometimes carry more weight than a speech.
‘Precarity’ brings a heavier edge to Glover’s Americana sound. It moves with a slow, uneasy pulse, with slide guitar and male harmony vocals adding to the feeling of instability at the centre of the song. Glover first wrote it from a personal place, thinking about job insecurity, but the song has since widened into something much larger.
“Now, I see precarity all around us, with the collapse of various systems and institutional structures in American society and government,” Glover says.
That wider meaning gives the song its force. ‘Precarity’ is not only about work, or money, or one person’s uncertain future. It is about the creeping sense that the ground itself has become less steady, from the corner shop to the schoolhouse to small-town America. Glover catches that feeling without overplaying it, letting the song carry its worry at a human pace.
Produced by Glover with Julian Smedley and Benjamin Lange, ‘Mercy In This Land’ leans into a fuller band sound than her earlier records. Folk, country, rock and bluegrass all find their place here, but the centre remains Glover’s voice and her clear concern for how people live, endure and make sense of the world around them.
Headline photo by Saveria Avantaggio
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