As Amanda Anne Platt and The Honeycutters reach the halfway point of their “deconstructed album” release with two more singles embodying the collection’s over-arching The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea concept, the singer-songwriter has chosen a pair of titles that offer complementary glimpses of parent-child relationships framed in contrasting musical settings.

“‘Great Confession’ was the first song I wrote after the birth of my daughter,” says Platt. “It carries a lot of the same themes that repeat on this album… growing up, growing old, learning more about what it means to be a parent and a child and a human. Rick Cooper plays the electric guitar, showcasing another one of his unsung talents.”

Indeed, Cooper’s contribution here fits perfectly into the song’s mellow, melancholy country-rock mood nestling next to Matt Smith’s pedal steel guitar as they glide over the bed of sustained organ chords and flashes of piano supplied by Kevin Williams and drummer Evan Martin. With its cold vocal start, swelling, steel-driven outro, and meditative storyline built around choruses that ask two different, yet equally wistful questions:

“…now you’re up at dawn just waiting on another great confession
don’t it seem like there should be some kind of lesson?…”

“…now you’re staring at the business end of all your bad decisions
don’t it seem like there should be some kind of wisdom?

“Great Confession” is a performance that at once reminds listeners of a long line of country classics and stands on its own as an emblem of Amanda Anne Platt and the Honeycutters’ quintessential sound and vibe.

On the “Deep Blue Sea” side, “Even Good Men Get the Blues” takes a slower and even darker tone—though it offers a bit of kindness, too. Framed by a melodic pedal steel guitar and piano figure that’s offered in both restrained and more impassioned versions, the song is filled with Platt’s characteristically insightful turns of speech in lines like “His pain is like an eighteen wheeler/that’s a lot of heavy to slow down,” while echoing “Great Confession”’s paired choruses:

“And it hurts to say you love him
cause you hate him sometimes too
Darling, we’re all slave to something
and even good men get the blues”

“And it hurts to say you love him
cause he looks so much like you
Darling, we’ll all slave to something
and even good men get the blues”

“‘Even Good Men Get the Blues’ is a song about addiction, and fatherhood, and the space between our intentions and reality,” notes Platt. “I wrote this long before I became a parent myself so it’s interesting to see it in a different light now.”