Music Release

FEATURED RELEASE

AMANDA ANNE PLATT & THE HONEYCUTTERS

Dallas / Reverie

RECORD LABEL:
Organic Records

RELEASE DATE:
08/13/2021

UPC:
783895209658

GENRE:
Americana

LOCATION:
Asheville, North Carolina

DESCRIPTION:

Since April, Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters have been releasing music from their upcoming collection, The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, a concept suite built from songs recorded under the straitened circumstances of quarantine and envisioned as a “deconstructed album,” released, not as a package, but in a series of paired singles, with each pair drawing on both of the titular concept’s two sides. The latest, “Dallas” and “Reverie,” finds the Organic Records artist bearing down on unanswered questions, whether they’re framed in a slowly simmering country-rocker (“Dallas”) or by the more introverted, acoustic treatment of “Reverie.”

“‘Dallas’ is kind of a tribute to our old tour van, Toby (no vehicle of mine goes without a name),” Platt notes—though, as is often the case, the ostensive subject barely makes an appearance in the song’s lyric—”and also to all that went on in the years I spent traveling the country in that van. It’s weird to look back on that time and realize how young I was for a lot of it. This is a song about feeling older but maybe not any wiser…or wiser just by virtue of understanding how little you know. The track features Kevin Williams on keys and my dad, Mark Platt, on harmonica.”

With its pent-up energy and vintage-sounding piano and organ combination, “Dallas” unwinds like the endless miles of road Platt and the band traveled, as the singer-songwriter wistfully recalls:It all seemed so clear while we were drinking
I knew how to set the whole world straight
but the sun came like a thousand bells ringing
and I found I’d just been looking at it sideways

By the end, as the band swells into a classic-sounding crescendo, what’s left is a final observation and a faintly hopeful question: The darkness, it’ll find you that’s for certain / Don’t we all get born with a little bit of light to shine?

And while “Reverie” opts for a more acoustic setting, with the organ giving way to a dobro, and upright bass replacing electric, its contemplative narrator is no more certain than the one in “Dallas.” The song moves from its quiet opening observation to reveal the heart of the matter:I woke to a letter on my front door
said you ain’t gonna come around here no more

And though she hasn’t wholly given up on the relationship, the closing seems to acknowledge the inevitable as it offers only a forlorn recollection: I awoke from the wildest dream/We were side by side and we both knew peace.

“‘Reverie’ is basically a break up song that I wrote during a time when I also wrote five hundred other break up songs (maybe not quite), so I was self conscious about beating a dead horse and never did anything with it,” Platt says. “I find that it doesn’t feel so specific to me now… it’s just a song about saying goodbye to someone you still care about. Rick Cooper played upright bass and Matt Smith played dobro on this, giving it an acoustic feel that I really love and hadn’t explored in a while.”

KEY SELLING POINTS

  • An Asheville, NC entity, the band is critically acclaimed locally, regionally, nationally, as well as overseas
  • Previous 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

TRACK LISTING

  1. Dallas
  2. Reverie

FEATURED PLAYLIST

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