Leeds-based singer/songwriter and musician Jacob Andrews is the creative mastermind behind the rising recording project Honey Guide. Andrews is part of a music scene that recently has been pervaded with a spirit of cooperation and collectiveness with various projects trading ideas, members and resources with the idea of uplifting the city’s entire indie scene: He has played with Far Caspian, Niall Summerton and Harry Hanson. He’s currently working on material with Van Houten’s Louis Sadler. And Andrews has Andrews has worked on his material with members of Eades at their Bam Bam Studios.
Andrews’ Honey Guide debut EP, A Tidy Room Is A Tidy Mind is slated for a Friday release through Eades’ own Bam Bam Records. The EP will feature previously released and highly acclaimed singles “I Feel Funny” “Oh Why” — and the EP’s latest single, the woozy “Just My Style,” a few good anthem that thematically focuses on the odd push and pull many of us feel when in a new relationship/situationship: the simultaneous desire to play it cool and move slowly, and to surrender yourself fully to your feelings.
A Tidy Room Is A Tidy Mind‘s fourth and latest single, the slow-burning “Nom De Plume” continues a run of woozy and unhurried material. Featuring subtle nods to blue-eyed soul and The Beatles — to my ears, at least — the song may arguably be among the most contemplative and wistful of the rising Leeds-based musician’s growing catalog with the song evoking a familiar feeling for all of us: that old “if I had known now, what I had known then, maybe I would have done differently”/”what if I acted or done differently when x happened?”
“Nom De Plume is essentially about wishing to start again, with whatever it may be,” Andrews explains in press notes. “I often find myself battling with the thought that I’d have done things a little differently, spent a little more time and patience on someone, spent a little more time doing something that would have been worth my while, wishing that I’d have planned a little better. I remember getting asked ‘If you could change the name of your project from Honey Guide to something else, would you?’. The answer is absolutely not. The name Honey Guide is my Nom De Plume (or pen name) for writing music, as I didn’t really like the idea of using my actual name. I kind of liked the idea of it sort of being an alter ego in a sense. Guiding anyone who listened to something sweeter.”