PREMIERE: Felicity Cripps Band launch new single 'Volcano (It Would Be So Nice To Die With You)'

Australian singer-songwriter Felicity Cripps Band will tomorrow release her second album Chasing Volcanoes alongside the lead single ‘Volcano (It Would Be So Nice To Die With You)’, which you can listen to and watch the visualiser today exclusively on Women In Pop.

Chasing Volcanoes was created over four years with Nick Huggins. It is her first album since 2017, and during that time Cripps gave birth to her first child as well as owning and operating local Castlemaine arts institution Theatre Royal with her husband. The theme of the album is searching for a connection, both to this world and the spiritual world, and is a beguiling collection of shimmering, moving, warm pop-folk-indie-rock music.

“Making this record was a form of escape from the everyday throes of life - not that anything was bad, but it was a difficult time to navigate work, motherhood and relationships not only with my loved ones but with myself,” Cripps says. “Without those days making music and sitting in the studio with Nick, working and reworking the ideas in my head, I would have really struggled to find my sense of self again. This record was vital, hopefully not just for me, but for others also.”

‘Volcano (It Would Be So Nice To Die With You)’ is, just like the album, a homage to the late volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died in 1991 in a pyroclastic flow on Mount Unzen, Japan. At over seven minutes long, it is a remarkable journey of a song that wends and weaves through multiple soundscapes and emotions. A gentle, understated beginning moves into saxophone solo before gradually building into a cinematic, multi-layered sections with numerous vocal lines. The progress of the song mirrors the journey of the Kraffts, from safe, innocent beginnings, to a sound that increasingly becomes urgent, loud, panicked before ending on discordant, fading synth notes.

The visualiser was created by Shane Donahue and features an ever changing, mesmerising parade of familiar yet indistinguishable coloured shapes.

“His work was deeply moving and mysterious and I felt like his approach to visualising music was the perfect thing for ‘Volcano’,” Cripps says. “This video was the first and only edit - I didn’t want to change anything about it. The first time I watched it, I was moved to tears. It captures everything, as well as the nothingness; joy and grief, beauty and horror, life and death and beyond”

“I tried using a blend of human movements interlaced with all of those eruptions to create those unpredictable and unstable patterns... Tried to reflect the context of the song and story,” Donahue says of the visualiser.

‘Volcano (It Would Be So Nice To Die With You)’ and its accompanying album, are what can only be described as event music. This is not something you throw on to fill in the background, but music you will want to sit with and drink in every note. Accomplished, intelligent, and magnetic, discover Felicity Cripps Band and listen to ‘Volcano (It Would Be So Nice To Die With You)’ today exclusively below before its general release on 22 August.

Chasing Volcanoes is released on 22 August. You can pre-save here.
Follow Felicity Cripps Band on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Bandcamp

Felicity Cripps Band is touring throughout August and September:
30 August - Major Tom’s - Kyneton, Dja Dja Wurrung. Support: Open Swimmer Tickets
7 September - Grace Cummings Support, Theatre Royal Castlemaine - Castlemaine, Dja Dja Wurrung. Tickets
11 September - The Merri Creek Tavern - Northcote, Wurundjeri Country. Support: Open Swimmer. Tickets
21 September - Wordspoken, Lot 19 - Castlemaine, Dja Dja Wurrung. Tickets
16 November - Town Folk Festival, Castlemaine, Dja Dja Wurrung. Tickets
22 November - Frente Support, The Wedge - Sale, Brayakaulung Country Tickets