Song Premiere: Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters, “Desert Flowers”
Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters’ gorgeous new song, “Desert Flowers,” washes over us in cascading waves of sound that evoke aching loneliness, yearning hope, hungry nostalgia, and pining for life on the road. Stately piano chords alternate with guitar down strums in the opening measure before soaring pedal steel strains and crystalline lead licks converge into a shimmering stream of beauty. Platt’s warm, smooth as honey, vocals flow into the sparkling river of sound as rivulets that sing of loss—“Lately I been thinking about the summer that I lost my mind”—and the healing powers of love and time—”You were so good at picking up the pieces/I’m not falling apart anymore.” Platt’s canny lyrics capture the tug of a life promises fullness but often is empty and the paradox of the beautiful dwelling in the midst of aridness and empty spaces: “Is it the empty I miss?/Dreams they bloom like desert flowers into the abyss/I had so much of nothing/I had everything.” Riding along a pedal steel reminiscent of Al Perkins’ steel licks, “Desert Flowers” echoes the raw beauty of Tom Waits, the Dead, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. The exquisite poetry and sonic splendor of Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters’ song lingers and resonates in the soul long after the last note fades
According to Platt: “This song is the first of a collection of songs that we are planning on releasing in the coming months. I went into the studio back in May hoping to make some demos to put out to potential producers for our next record, and I came away instead with the idea of releasing a string of home recordings and solo demos in a more raw, unproduced state. I think this has largely to do with the lack of connection so many of us have experienced during the pandemic– so many friends and musicians I know who are used to living their lives in venues and bars and hotels, making friends out of strangers every day, now oddly cut off from what gives them life. I feel the need to put as much of myself into my music as humanly possible now. “Desert Flowers” made sense to me as a first single because it’s a nostalgic song about a summer spent on the road. We recorded all our parts in our respective homes and though it was a little strange to do it this way when I’m used to recording all together in the studio, it gave me a real sense of satisfaction to hear it come together from so many different corners.”
“Desert Flowers” is available now for pre-order/pre-save – HERE.
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