Arden, North Carolina (December 10, 2021) — With the release of “Perfect Word”and “Only Just To Smile,” Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters conclude a year-long song cycle that is in equal parts ambitious and intimate. Birthed by the COVID-19 pandemic, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea has been revealed over the course of 2021 as a dual-themed series of musical moments and memories that, as the singer/songwriter said at the outset, “represent different sides of the creative process, with The Devil including the more manic, upbeat, outgoing — maybe even grotesque at times — and The Deep Blue Sea being more reclusive, contemplative, understated.”
Keyed to the first of those sides, “Perfect Word” is a graceful yet animated recollection of a final homecoming, set to a sinuous melody that unfolds in one memorable phrase after another over the band’s effortless-sounding mid-tempo groove even as its subject recalls the series’ opener, “New York.” “This is another song that came out of the period where my parents were selling the house I grew up in,” Platt offers. “So it felt fitting to end where we began (‘New York’ being on the same theme). It’s about my childhood and saying goodbye. I’m someone who tends to focus on endings instead of the beginnings they may represent, so this song was and is a helpful reminder to me that ‘love is not a perfect word, it knows no time or place.’”
Its companion, “Only Just To Smile,” sounds a welcome note of reconciliation with the passage of time, offered in a slower, wistful, yet ultimately uplifting setting from a group fully engaged in the moment. Framed in restraint and a steady stream of delicate touches by the Honeycutters — Evan Martin (drums), Rick Cooper (bass), Matt Smith (pedal steel guitar) and Kevin Williams (piano) — and her brother, Andrew, sitting in on electric guitar, Platt delivers what is surely one of the series’ most emblematic lyric passages, as she realizes:
“I cashed in all of my wild days
for swapping stories in our living room
and the things I left behind may call to me sometimes
but if I look back now it’s only just to smile”
“I wanted this song to be last in the line of single releases,” she notes. “Because it’s about being on the other side of change and feeling accepting of it. Sometimes we get blinded to all that we’ve gained when we pine for the past… I fall victim to that frequently. I wanted this song to be recorded live so that we could have everyone in one room together, an experience we’ve really lacked during this process because of the pandemic. It worked out magically.”
Listen to “Perfect Word” and “Only Just To Smile” HERE.
About Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters
Lyrically driven, the songs of Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters blend the band’s old-school country roots attitude with their shared influences of rock and folk. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Amanda Anne Platt is a storyteller by nature with an incredible band backing her. Performing along with Platt, The Honeycutters are Matt Smith on pedal steel and guitar; Rick Cooper on bass, guitar and vocals; and Evan Martin on drums, piano, organ and harmony vocals.
There is an empathetic and charming wit ingrained in Platt’s songwriting. She has a knack for accessing a deep well of emotion and applying it to her story-telling, whether she is writing from her own experiences or immersing herself into the melody of emotions in another person’s life.
Music City Roots’ Craig Havighurst writes, “She’s soothing (even in the hurtin’ songs) and sobering (except for the drinkin’ songs) and nuanced… I’d be hard pressed to find a finer string of recordings from any band working in the classic country/mountain tradition in these last five years.”
A homegrown entity, the band is critically acclaimed locally, regionally, nationally, as well as overseas. Their prior album Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters [Organic Records 2017] placed #2 (sandwiched between Jason Isbell and Gregg Allman) in their regional radio station WNCW’s year end listeners poll for 2017. The station’s Music Director Martin Anderson said to No Depression, “Amanda Platt writes songs on par with Lucinda, Isbell, Lauderdale, Hank Sr. In my opinion, anyway.”
“This is a band that does everything right,” says Goldmine’s Mike Greenblatt. “Platt deserves all that might come to her over this, her fifth (and best) album. Backed by pedal steel, electric guitar, keyboards, bass, drums, percussion, and vocal harmony, it’s Platt’s show as she writes, sings and co-produces. Complete with lyrics of introspection with the kind of words you can chew on long after the album ends, it also works on a lighter level by dint of the fact that it just sounds so damn good. Go as deep as you want. It’s all good, as they say.”
Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters received a shout out from Fodor’s Travel Magazine in a write-up about the band’s hometown of Asheville, NC, and a couple of years back they were also featured on XPN World Cafe’s Sense of Place series. In 2017, their music also placed into the Americana Music Association Year End Top 100 list of Americana Airplay for the second year in a row.