In a stunning display of music marketing genius, we have not only paired our 15th annual Christmas giveaway (aka the ‘December 17 Specials’) with the release of the first single from our forthcoming sixth studio album, we've also turned the apparently radio-friendly single format on its head by making it a brooding and melancholy six-minute tragi-drama, Vesuvius.
What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps a signifier of the shitty year that was 2023 - as if the pandemic years weren’t quite enough - Vesuvius is a musical imagining of fire and ash falling from a Pompeii sky on that fateful day in 79 AD. Not your typically festive Christmas fare, but hopefully ticking the box of thoughtful reflection that’s part of coming to the end of another year.
The surprise release also includes the slightly chirpier and much shorter Open Up Your Eyes. And if neither of these sound like your cup of eggnog, there’s always last year’s special giveaway, Christmas Forever. Vesuvius is available to stream and download for free, exclusively on our preferred music platform Bandcamp, on December 12 with all other platforms to follow on the very Kinematic date of December 17.
Vesuvius: liner notes, video and lyrics here