Garrett Anthony Rice Drops “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” & Surprise Christmas Single, “As Magic as the Snow”

Garrett Anthony Rice’s single release, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” and surprise single “As Magic as the Snow,” capture two distinct but intertwined shades of reflection. Both pieces explore how loss and memory leave their shadow long after loved ones have left us.

“Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” is quiet in a nearly holy way. The newest song from his upcoming double album, Equinox, reveals itself with the consideration of coming to terms with the past. Built on a melody that unfurls like a gentle guitar accented with soft flourishes of piano, you might think of the song less as a performance and more as a moment of memory. The writing feels like it is coming from those quiet corners of emotion, the moments when absence isn’t sharp, but simply part of the landscape. The spirit of the song is not to reconcile what has been lost. Instead, it captures the elegiac form of what once was. Whether the absence comes in the way of death, estrangement, or time doing what time does, the way Rice approaches distance is full of grace and tenderness that feels earned.

The chorus is where everything flourishes. It’s straightforward, direct, and open. At some point, when the bridge rises, it inflates into something that feels almost cathartic, where a choir of harmonies lift, and suddenly, grief becomes incandescent and bittersweet. The emotional architecture of the song is effortless but entirely purposeful. It’s the sound of someone discovering how to live with what is missing.

The companion track, “As Magic as the Snow,” adds a stark seasonal poignancy to the pairing. Far from a conventional Christmas song, it carries a darker undercurrent: a portrait of childhood grief seen through a winter lens. Inspired by the image of a young boy climbing his favourite hill at Christmas to visit the spirit of a lost friend, the song pairs innocence with ache, finding a quiet kind of light within sorrow.

Within Equinox, “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” is a breath between movements. Earlier work either pressed into, or pulsed with, the cinematic gospel (“Eden”) or reflective shimmer (“It’s Not the Summer”), yet in this song, the instrumentation and sentiment boil things down to the essentials: love, loss, and the quiet take on how to face both.

It’s not a song that asks for attention. It earns your attention tenderly, slowly, and with respectable honesty.

Garrett Anthony Rice “Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” single artwork

Garrett Anthony Rice “As Magic as the Snow” single artwork