Circles Around The Sun Releases Self-Titled Album Featuring Final Neal Casal Recordings

Circles Around the Sun issued their new self-titled studio album featuring the final studio recordings of the late Neal Casal. The seven-track release follows the band’s 2018 album, Let It Wander and their 2015 debut, Interlude For The Dead.

Casal, who tragically took his own life last year, formed CATS in 2015 to record music that was played during the setbreaks of the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well concerts. Keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne and drummer Mark Levy held the recording sessions for Circles Around The Sun at engineer Jim Scott’s Southern California studio with Casal a week before his death. A note left by Casal encouraged the band to continue and release the new record.

“We love this music,” MacDougall stated. “The three of us — Dan, Mark, and myself — we really love it and really don’t want to stop playing it. 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.”

A rotating cast of guitarists has performed with CATS following Casal’s death. The band’s self-titled album, Circles Around The Sun, can be streamed below: