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Árný Margrét: “When I write songs, they have to really mean something”

Rising Icelandic folk-pop star Árný Margrét is, quite simply, one of those unforgettable voices. Seemingly singing her soul, she brings the texture of her home in the Westfjords of Iceland, where she first intended to write simply for herself, and fuses it with her mellow guitar chords with poetic thoughts. Hers is a style of simple-meets-poignant songwriting that’s gone international through how gracefully it bares the young vocalist’s older-feeling soul.

For shining examples, take the closing track on the singer’s debut album ‘They Only Talk About The Weather’, entitled ‘Abandoned’, on which her voice briefly cracks as she sings of forgiveness, or the gentle low-key lullaby of ‘The World Is Between Us’, on which her vocal reaches yet new highs. This is a strange road for Árný, but a beautiful and unexpected one.

“It’s strange,” she laughs when we talk of her breakthrough. “I think my songs get a new life when you play them for people. I still try to be myself, like when I used to write these songs in my room. Where I come from is a small town isolated from everything. The weather is very dramatic and contrasting, sunny one day and snowy the next, and the mountains are in your face. It has a real effect on everyday life.”

“I try to write wherever I am, but some songs come together really slowly over a long period. I also write on the plane or in the car. The new EP is less about the weather, as I haven’t been home much. It’s more about myself and the things around me. My songs are literal and honest, but they can be understood in different ways, so it’s about interpretation.”

“‘Abandoned’ is last, with no instruments, just a single-take recording with guitar and vocal, and I give it everything. It’s very sad and vulnerable, and it’s a lot. I find that creepy to do on stage, so I’ve only done ‘Abandoned’ once or twice live, as I find it scary. But I’m really trying to do it more often.” [a few hours after our chat, Árný plays ‘Abandoned’ as part of her set, much to our surprise and delight].

Árný’s breakthrough story comes in part through an Icelandic music icon known simply as ‘Kiddy’, who also produced the album. “He’s around everything, and he knows everyone in the industry,” she says. “When I heard from him, I wasn’t really playing live at all. He saw me in a recording, so I went to his studio and played ten songs, just sat in a chair. I left all my lyrics behind in his studio, so he texted me to tell me to come back.”

“I came back to collect my stuff and did ten more songs, and by then he was into the idea of doing something. The EP and album came after that. It was Gregory Alan Isakov that got me going, though. I was 14 when I found his songs ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Second Chances’, and I went from that to teaching myself his songs, lots of covers. It took learning his music over time to think maybe I could do something.”

“I think when I write songs, they have to really mean something and say something. They can’t be useless information about my day or whatever, so that’s how I try to write. When it comes out from the other end, it’s not about what I meant with the song anymore. It’s about listening to a story, in some way, but also about what it means to the listener. A conversation.” 

There’s a raw truth in Árný’s journey from isolation to the conversation she speaks of, but there’s also a simple beauty: this music works because it delivers a message from the heart with incredible vocal and poetic ability. The combination sends shivers.

The Five Best Bands I Saw At Europavox 2023 (Clermont-Ferrand)

I’ve been involved in Europavox for about five year now. It’s a really cool music project that, amongst other things, is specifically designed to take bands that are breaking through in one part of Europe, and promote them in other locations. There are some truly brilliant products of it: Sigrid, Molchat Doma, Just Mustard and Dermot Kennedy have all been involved in the past.

Despite five years of involvement, much of it as the English langauge editor, this weekend was only my second trip to the main event, which takes place annually in Clermont-Ferrand, in the shadow of the volcanoes of the French massif. In fact, because of various staff changes, I was meeting a lot of the team for the first time, despite working with them incredibly regularly. This year involved 38 different acts from 18 different countries around Europe, and a long weekend watching them, including the great (invite only) aside of the recording of the ARTE Sessions, a series of three-track semi-studio recordings for TV that happened alongside the festival (I saw seven acts over the weekend in this environment).

Like in 2018, I’ve decided to put together a short list of what I enjoyed the most, partly because I’ve loved looking back at the old one, but also in the hope it gives them a tiny bit of promo outside of what I’m doing elsewhere. So without further rambling, here are my five favourite acts of the weekend (it might be worth noting that I couldn’t attend on Sunday, and I’ve also deliberately left out the Irish acts as they’d already be well known to most people who will read this, so this is really a favourite acts from Thursday to Saturday that aren’t Irish, which is another way pf saying I decided not to give you a paragraph on Thumper, who I’ve written about extensively before. The broader point, of course, is check out all the below, they’re all great…)

Arny Margret (Iceland)

How much do I like Arny Margret? I’ve a literal list of acts I want to see when they eventually land somewhere in my vaccinity, and alongside a list of 8 or 10 acts that are mostly close to household names, you would, until this show, have found Arny. She’s a young-with-an-old-soul Icelandic singer-songwriter from a tiny town in the Westfjords, performing songs penned over the course of snowed-in winters that pour her heart into poetic turns of phrase.

With a vibe similar to Joni Mitchell at her most poppy and accesible, her sound is incredibly minimalist, made up of a sparsely used acoustic guitar and a note-perfect, soulful vocal. I particularly like the gut-wrenching beauty of album closer ‘Abandoned’, which she rarely plays live but did in Clermont (I won’t lie, I told her I love the track in interview beforehand so I suspect I may have nudged her, but who knows). Singles like ‘They Only Talk About The Weather’ and ‘The World Is Between Us’ both have incredible beauty, found largely in their poetic sentimentality and heartache. Arny Margret is not quite a pop act purely because of the gentle pace of her work, but what she produces is certain to bring her far: it’s simply spellbinding.

SKAAR (Norway)

Despite the name suggesting a metal act, SKAAR are a soaring female-fronted emotional electro pop act who were absolutely superb live, reminscent of latter-day Florence and the Machine with slightly heftier electro elements. She already seems to be on the road to fame, and has a small date at Dublin’s Workman’s Club later this year that I’m definitely keen to check out. I found this euphoric, and it felt like the singer did, too, which is always a bonus. Accessible and charming.