With ‘Tantalus’, Emma Hessels sings in her mother tongue for the first time. The song has been part of her live set for quite a while, but is now finally getting a proper release. What started as a passage in her diary gradually grew into a song about something that stubbornly refuses to be grasped.
Its title draws on Tantalus, the figure from Greek mythology condemned to forever reach for something that moves just beyond his grasp. Emma finds herself caught in a similar pursuit, searching for words for a feeling that keeps slipping away. She drags herself from party to party and from one laugh to the next, while something underneath continues to gnaw at her. Rather than forcing it into a neat explanation, she allows the uncertainty to remain. By the end, she simply learns to dance with the beast.
Musically, ‘Tantalus’ keeps things small. Gentle acoustic guitar picking carries a song that needs little embellishment, leaving plenty of room for Emma’s voice and words. Following her English-language debut EP ‘Constant Distance’, hearing her sing in Dutch doesn’t feel like a change of direction. More like a song that has quietly existed alongside her other work all this time, finally finding its place.