Circles Around The Sun Release "Leaving (Rogue Lemon)" Music Video [Watch]

Circles Around The Sun have released a music video for “Leaving (Rogue Lemon)”, off the band’s forthcoming self-titled album.

The video, directed by Mat Dunlap and animated by Rob Fidel, blends live-action footage of the band in the studio with pertinent animations. Prominently featured throughout the video, as well as the album, is CATS’ late-guitarist Neal Casal who committed suicide last summer. The song and video coincide in an exploratory vibe that doesn’t meander but also doesn’t necessarily drive to the desired end. In essence, “Leaving (Rogue Lemon)”, captures the band’s live sound in a studio setting, while the video itself approaches the ambient visualization of the feelings the song conveys. Bassist Dan Horne explained the song,

‘Leaving (Rogue Lemon)’ is a story about a lemon that fell too far from the tree. It realized there was more to life than just being squeezed. It was tired of just making things sour, so it created its own path. But then after many wild adventures and tribulations it began to think, ‘Am I even a lemon? Was that tree even the tree from which I was grown? Maybe I was just dropped from the sky by a bird and fell through that lemon tree onto the ground, and that’s why I rolled so much farther than the others?’ The Rogue Lemon asks us to question if the cycle of life is really a cycle or is it a spiral?

Watch the video for “Leaving (Rogue Lemon)” from Circles Around the Sun’s forthcoming eponymous album, available everywhere March 13th.

Circle Around The Sun – “Leaving (Rogue Lemon)”

[Video: Circles Around The Sun]

Circles Around The Sun features Casal’s final recordings, as the sessions were tracked by engineer Jim Scott just one week before Casal’s untimely death on August 26th, 2019. In a note Casal left to his bandmates, he was adamant that the album be released and that the group continued to tour without him. In the months since, CATS has played with a variety of guitarists, as they have chosen not to elect a permanent member to replace Casal. This coming April when the band hits the West Coast, they will be joined by Scott Metzger from Joe Russo’s Almost Dead.

“We love this music. The three of us—Dan, Mark, and myself—we really love it and really don’t want to stop playing it,” keyboardist Adam MacDougall said. “I don’t want our decision to come off in any other way than based on the fact we really, really love this band so much. We would always sit around and talk about the dream: the feeling of what it was like to be a teenager and start your own band. It’s your band, with everyone pulling their own weight, doing their part. This band felt like being in high school again.”

Circles Around The Sun’s next scheduled appearance is at Leftover Salmon‘s Boogie at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs on March 20th. After that, they hit 10 Mile Ride: A Deadhead Ski Trip in Frisco, CO on March 28th. For tickets and a full list of tour dates, head to their website.