Mike McCready Debuts "Farewell to Seasons" Title Track Ahead of 1 December Album

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has debuted the title track from Farewell to Seasons, his upcoming rock opera. The song is a tribute to Seattle's music scene, and it arrived with an animated music video directed by Cyrus Entezam, Rolling Stone reported on 13 November.

Debuting a track means it is heard publicly for the first time. The album it comes from is set for release on 1 December, and the title track is the first song listeners can hear from it.

A rock opera is an album that tells one story through its songs, usually from start to finish. McCready's project is described as a "lost" rock opera, and it spans 11 new songs. All 11 are written and recorded by David Williams, the fictional lead character in the accompanying graphic novel.

That graphic novel, a book-length comic told as one story, will be published by Z2, a comics publisher. The project therefore runs across several formats at once: a single song, an animated video, an album and a book. Because the songs and the comic share the same lead character, the two are linked from the start.

Releasing a single before an album is a common way for artists and labels to give listeners a first taste. A song and its video can show the mood and the setting before the full record arrives, and listeners can decide whether they want to wait for the rest. For this project, the title track and its video are the first public look at a story that is still to be fully told.

For anyone following the release, the schedule is simple. The title track and video are out now, and the full album follows on 1 December. The graphic novel, from Z2, is the third piece of the project and is due to follow the same story.

The announcement came from Rolling Stone's music desk, which reported the debut and the accompanying material. Further details on the album's track list and the graphic novel's publication date are worth watching for as the release approaches.