Katie Gregson-Macleod Details Debut Album ‘Albatross’

Katie Gregson-Macleod has confirmed the details of her first full-length, Albatross, out November 6 through Matt Maltese’s Last Recordings On Earth. The album arrives after a period of significant recalibration: Gregson-Macleod parted ways with her former major label, moved back to the Scottish Highlands, and had to reconstruct her relationship with songwriting.

The title points to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the albatross is both blessing and curse — a weight that cannot be easily shed. That tension frames the record, which follows last year’s EP Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early.

The first proper introduction is “Nothing Really Changes,” a track Gregson-Macleod has called both the album’s opening number and its narrative conclusion. “Rather than attempt to make sense of anything, ‘Nothing Really Changes’ just sits back and observes it,” she said. “The conclusion: it always does.”

Gregson-Macleod will play a series of intimate UK shows ahead of the album’s release, beginning August 26 at Brighton’s Folklore Rooms, with Bonnie Kemplay as support.