Elmiene has a way with heartbreak and heartache. The singer-songwriter, who wowed us with his debut EP Marking My Time last year, has killed us softly with his songs about love and loss. His most recent effort, “Crystal Tears,” continued along that trajectory, and he picks the thread back up with his latest single “Sweetness.”
Produced by Dahi, “Sweetness” takes a subtly percolating bongo rhythm and layers spare piano and snare on it to serve as the song’s nostalgic foundation. Elmiene takes it the rest of the way as he laments a love that, if it had been left undisturbed, had the potential to be much more than it became.
“How it dies easy / When what’s inside dried gradually / Sweetness was so divine to me / Gone was the one who’d care for me,” he offers on the emotional chorus. “Fell, would’ve left you gradually / Spoiled where we’d rather be / We could’ve been just fine / Hanging up on the vine.”
The song’s visual picks up where the clip for “Crystal Tears” left off. We see the singer walking down the street until he curiously stops in front of a shop with several vintage TVs in its window. This prompts him to enter the store as he performs the song. The televisions, in turn, broadcast his lament to passersby outside, eventually drawing a crowd of onlookers who seem to identify with his message. He ends the clip by grabbing a TV from the shop and leaving the store by his lonesome, though it seems that maybe his burdens are at rest for now.
With Elmiene getting pretty prolific as of late, we doubt this will be the last that we see or hear from him before 2024 is up. Until he offers more, though, you can let his “Sweetness” linger a little while longer by listening to the song and watching its visual below.
