Out and about, rushing here and there, enduring stop-and-go traffic and overly crowded aisles in a grocery store: That was my Friday. Before I parked, however, Arny Margret’s smooth sound drifted from the speakers as if a gyrfalcon gliding on a gust of wind, with her vocals swooping low and plucking me from the driver’s seat. As I noted on Saturday, it was one of a successive of moments that spoke to the power of music and algorithms—as well as, and I realize this now, the conditional formatting we sometimes apply to new sounds.
How many times have I clicked “next” 10, 15 or 30 seconds into a New Music Mix pick? I’m positive I’ve done just that in recent months with Icelandic singer-songwriter Arny Margret, whose folk-flavored offerings have surely popped up in Apple Music’s “refreshed every Friday” playlist, which I tend to listen to when running errands over the weekend. Maybe I was distracted on those days or not in the mood, or too focused on the fools on the road who blow through red lights to pay her proper attention. But, after listening to her sophomore album, I Miss You, I Do, over the weekend, I can attest to its innate strength. The songs come shimmering through the speakers as if from the subconscious.
The album, which was released a few weeks back, collects 10 songs she recorded and co-produced in New York, North Carolina, Colorado and her native Iceland with an array of new and old friends; there’s a uniform sound throughout, however. It reminds me of a seemingly calm sea that shields a powerful undertow just beneath the surface.
The set opens with the slow beat of a drum, the instrumentation gradually expanding into the stirring title track. “Crooked Teeth” is equally evocative, while “Greyhound Station” finds her missing home while traveling from Virginia to North Carolina and, too, revisiting past hurts. “I Love You” acknowledges the sacrifices someone—her mother, perhaps—made throughout her life. “Day Old Thoughts,” on the other hand, mines the epiphanies that come to us a little too late. “Maybe I’ve Wasted My Time,” on the other hand, finds her reflecting on a relationship that’s perhaps run its course with regret and not rancor.
“Took the Train ’til the End,” the song that caught my ear on Friday, is a thing of melancholic beauty, while “You’re Mine, I’m Yours” is a gentle celebration of love. “Born in Spring” seeks distance between herself and another, while “Happy New Year” recaps the highs and lows that fall between Christmas and New Year’s Eve—a time of celebration for some, a time of quiet desperation for others.
In short, I Miss You, I Do is a tremendous, acoustic-driven album accented by lyrics seemingly lifted from the collective unconscious; she puts into words feelings and thoughts we all have, or have had, at one time or another. It reminds me of the closing to Denise Levertov’s “Emblem (II),” inspired by a cocoon: “The world/is made of days, and is itself/a shrouded day. It stifles. It’s our world, and we/its dreams, its creased/compacted wings.”
The Old Grey Cat 