For the past few years, Great Grand Sun has made it a bit of a tradition to release new music on Halloween. The tracks themselves aren’t traditionally Halloween focused – i.e. they aren’t meant to be your soundtrack for a night out on the town trick-or-treating – but they do seem to embrace the roots of Halloween. Maybe I’m stretching here but allow me to divulge for just a moment…
Halloween’s roots go way back to a Celtic tradition known as “Samhain” – an evening that was believed to blur the line between the living and the dead. The idea being that if the dead were ever to return to Earth, this would be the night to do it. The Celts would light fires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Like most traditions, this was appropriated and changed over time to become a celebratory time of costume wearing and candy consumption but the root tradition of spirits returning to our realm is still intact.
Both “Unconditional Love” and the b-side, “Life was Full of Joy & Light”, are a lament on lost love of the most intense kind. Releasing this on Halloween is nod to the death of that feeling. The Celts used Halloween to ward off spirits but with the veil being thinned, it’s also an opportune time to welcome those lost to another realm back into our lives. What better time to ponder a lost love than the evening when the possibility of it returning could be possible? The pair are absolutely tragical songs on their own but combining them with a Halloween release just adds another layer of painful wistfulness.