A serenade as sweet as honey. A galloping string-driven groove. Packing more swing than almost any country song I’ve heard lately has, The Promised make their worldwide debut in “We Could Be In Love,” and amidst the stampeding rhythm that they discharge so effortlessly, they introduce listeners to a strain of Canadian country that is decidedly more optimistic in tone than its American equivalent is. Both the music video for “We Could Be In Love” and the composition itself are brimming with a confident melodicism that is impressively infectious, and though they’re the only content that we have to judge this pair on, they tell us all we need to know about the talent The Promised so proudly possess.
For being a rookie release, this single has a very professional production quality. You can tell that a lot of love went into crafting the finer points of the song – the strings are crisp and cutting where the words allow for them to take command of the narrative, the drums contextualize the mood of the music, and most important of all, the vocal harmonies are given a divine spotlight in the middle of the instrumental grind. The music video is just as erudite and efficient a work of art, and though it’s got a Hollywood-style polish, it doesn’t look or feel generic at all.
The master mix that The Promised employ in “We Could Be In Love” is ultra-refined and allows for us to experience all of the emotion in the duet that occupies the throne room in this castle of rhythm and rhyme. Though the music video and the single have what would appear to be the same mix, I did notice the vocal track popping a little more in the video. The connection that viewers develop with the band and the characters in its visuals could be what makes it feel so much more pronounced, which is rather conceptual a notion for any video in the country genre these days.
I’ve never been the biggest country music fan, but I was surprisingly pleased with this debut release from The Promised. They don’t remind me of anyone operating out of Nashville at the moment, and though their Canadian peers have been rousing a lot of attention this summer as well, there’s nothing in “We Could Be In Love” to tether these two to some larger movement within the genre right now. This is truly their own sound, and I’m quite curious to hear how it evolves in the next few years.
