Denise Glover Releases New Album MERCY IN THIS LAND
The Seattle-based anthropologist and musician draws on her academic background to explore identity, community and belonging.
Seattle-based Americana singer-songwriter Denise Glover has released her fourth album, MERCY IN THIS LAND, a seven-song collection that blends folk, country, rock, and bluegrass into a wide-ranging exploration of American identity. The record pairs original songs with reworked material, taking on themes of immigration, privilege, and access while examining what it means to build a life in the United States today.
'A lot of the themes on this album stem from the immigrant's struggle, navigating a multi-cultural world that has such an unequal distribution of privilege and access,' the Seattle, Washington-based artist says.
The singer, songwriter, and guitarist wields a unique perspective. She's an anthropologist and her work reflects that in its empathic tone and outward-looking approach to songwriting which favors exploring identity and community and storytelling.
'As anthropologists, we live with and among people. We learn to experience and see life through the eyes of others, as best we can,' Glover says. 'This gives us the ability to really put ourselves in the shoes of another, take on, and, hopefully, understand different perspectives. So that methodology or practice I think for sure pours over into my songwriting.'
Throughout MERCY IN THIS LAND, Glover explores contemporary American struggles with compassion for the nation's ideals and weariness at how those ideals have been distorted in recent years. The album addresses these tensions both directly and symbolically. Alongside original material, Glover reimagines Bob Dylan's 'Señor (Tales of Yankee Power),' a song that takes on new resonance in the era of aggressive immigration enforcement, and J.D. Souther's 'I Can Almost See It,' which closes the album with sparse elegance. 'I was joking in the studio saying, 'I can almost see our democracy going by,'' Glover says with a laugh.
Her haunting rendition of Gillian Welch's 'Peace in the Valley' expands the song into a textural full-band arrangement, offering a striking counterpoint to Welch's intimate vocal-and-guitar original. For Glover, the song resonates with deeper historical reflection. 'As a student of history and teacher of anthropology, the plight of Native peoples in the Americas has always stayed with me,' she says. 'Geronimo surrendered to the white man but never truly gave up—he continued to work toward peace and justice. That perseverance is inspiring.'
Glover's bluegrass-tinged original 'Lady Liberty,' featuring lyrics adapted from an Emma Lazarus poem, pays tribute to an earlier vision of a welcoming America embodied by the Statue of Liberty. The 'Lady Liberty' sentiment is explored through a rare moment of Glover personal revelation on the country-tinged 'The Homeland,' a song inspired by a trip to Italy in which Glover met her Italian relatives for the first time. 'The trip felt like a homecoming of sorts, and I pictured how difficult it must have been for my great grandmother to leave her beautiful hilltop village to travel to America as a young woman by herself,' Glover says. One of the song's most touching lyrics are: A hundred years on my progeny are returning/They see the sunshine through young and hopeful eyes/At last my soul can rest, mother tongue in their chests/I've come home Mama, like I said I would.
Glover, who works as an anthropologist in addition to her music career, has said that background informs her songwriting approach, describing an emphasis on understanding other perspectives that carries over into the way she builds narratives on the album. MERCY IN THIS LAND also includes Glover's interpretations of songs by Bob Dylan, J.D. Souther, and Gillian Welch.
