B-Side Guys

Tom Gluewicki frames resilience through repetition, returning to the phrase “I will carry on / In my sweetest tone” like a mantra that gains power through insistence rather than volume. This live recording from his studio apartment—part of the Time Machine (Live from the Flat) album marking ten years since his debut—strips the production down to essentials, letting the song’s defiant core shine through without studio polish to soften its edges.

The verses cycle through exhaustion and disappointment in vivid physical terms—pills drying him out, jeans wearing him out, the constant push and pull of being built up only to be torn down. There’s a specificity to these images that speaks to real fatigue, the kind that accumulates from navigating a world that constantly reminds you where it thinks you belong. Gluewicki’s immigrant experience colors every line without needing to announce itself; the mistreatment he describes in the verses is both personal and systemic, individual moments that add up to a pattern.

What makes the chorus hit is its refusal to match bitterness with bitterness. “It’s alright” could read as resignation, but in Gluewicki’s delivery it sounds more like determination—not that everything is fine, but that he’ll continue regardless. The “sweetest tone” becomes an act of defiance, a choice to maintain grace despite circumstances designed to break it. That final plea, “Sometime I wish you could just / Wait for me,” lands with quiet devastation, acknowledging the desire for patience and understanding that’s rarely extended.

The live-from-the-flat setup suits the material perfectly. Recording in the same studio apartment where he once worked in a closet, Gluewicki and his band capture an intimacy that a professional studio might polish away. This is the sound of someone who’s built a decade-long career on resourcefulness and persistence, who fixed his first guitar at twelve and has been making something out of limited means ever since.

For an anniversary retrospective, “My Sweetest Tone” proves that the songs worth revisiting are the ones that never stopped being relevant. A decade after Wait For Steady Light, Gluewicki’s still carrying on, still finding his sweetest tone, still standing his ground. The circumstances that inspired the song haven’t disappeared—they’ve just been met with ten more years of refusal to be worn out completely.