Following on from recent album ‘Phenomenology’, The Mining Co. has released a festive single, the beautifully tuneful and weary ‘Last Stop for Tired Reindeer’. The Mining Co. is the musical project of Ireland’s London-based Michael Gallagher. Gallagher loves a Christmas song and fans of seasonal music should check out his 2019 EP ‘Three Kings’. This time around, Gallagher empathises with the reindeer, celebrating their hard-work and reliability. We sense their tiredness through Gallagher’s drawn out notes and the song’s gentle pace. Nashville’s Chris Carmichael (Josh Rouse, Taylor Swift, Chuck Prophet) has arranged the strings, and his delivery adds warmth and texture to ‘Last Stop for Tired Reindeer’.
Roger Francis Cook, video-maker for ‘Last Stop for Tired Reindeer’, has created a nostalgic accompanying video. He explains: “Mike and I had previously made a video for his track Long Way to Christmas, which we made using old black and white, public domain clips from Christmas films to create something that had a nostalgic Dickensian feel to it. This time around working on Mike’s latest Christmas track it felt like we should thematically connect it to ‘Longway to Christmas’ to create a nostalgic feel using public domain footage, but this time using clips from hyper colourful Christmas cartoons and television specials for more of a 60s or 70s feel. Because the song has such specific imagery of reindeer I wasn’t sure if we would find clips that would fit the song and I told Mike that we may have to give the video more of a general Christmas feel as a back up. But luckily there were some great public domain films with loads of great Reindeer moments, and we were really able to complement the imagery in the song pretty well in the end.”
‘Last Stop for Tired Reindeer’ has been released alongside another brand new Christmas number, ‘Holy star’, a heartfelt and haunting ballad. It’s almost time for Christmas, folks. Check this out.
