Vampire Valentine Releases Another Day
GIO’s third album, Semprevive, comes out January 15, 2027 on Morella Records. It’s the label’s first anniversary, and the same day Morella Records: The Story So Far, the label’s documentary, premieres.
Semprevive is Italian for “everlasting flowers,” the kind placed on graves that never wilt. The album is built around eight women from Poe’s fiction, told by someone who was alive when Poe wrote them. GIO read these stories as they first appeared in the periodicals of the 1830s and 40s, and he’s been carrying them ever since. Semprevive is where he finally sets them down.
Tracklist
- Morella
- Madeline
- Berenice
- Ligeia
- The Oval Portrait
- Eleonora
- The Assignation
- Hop-Frog
No two songs on Semprevive are built the same way. Each of these women gets her own world, from the hypnotic spiral of Berenice to Ligeia, the album’s heavyweight, to Hop-Frog, the closer and the only story on the record where the powerless win.
The singles
Four songs from the album are coming out as singles before the full record. Proceeds from all four go to Poe Baltimore’s Stand Guard for Poe House campaign, to help protect the real Poe House in Baltimore.
Madeline: out now (September 15)
From The Fall of the House of Usher. Madeline Usher, buried alive in her own family home while her twin brother unravels above her. The verses hold on a single airless drone until the chorus finally breaks it open.
Eleonora: out now (October 15)
The most tender song GIO has ever recorded. Eleonora is the one woman in Poe’s fiction who shows mercy, releasing the one she loved from grief so he can love again. GIO calls it the rarest thing he’s witnessed in five hundred and sixty years.
The Assignation: November 15
Venice at night, torchlight on water. Two secret lovers who have already decided how their story ends, and simply keep their appointment.
Morella: December 15
The story that gave this label its name. A wife whose identity refuses to leave, returning through her own daughter. It’s the album’s opening track and its thesis: some souls do not leave.
About Poe House
The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum at 203 N. Amity Street in Baltimore is the small brick house where Poe lived with his family in the early 1830s and began his writing career. Two of the stories on Semprevive, Berenice and Morella, were written there. It’s a National Historic Landmark, run by the nonprofit Poe Baltimore.
This year, demolition began on the former Poe Homes, the city’s first public housing project, which shares a wall with the house. The adjacent building was left open to the weather for 36 days, and the museum has dealt with water getting in, vandalism and security costs nobody planned for. Independent vibration and crack monitoring began in September and is expected to cost between $12,000 and $25,000, on top of the emergency campaign.
Poe Baltimore’s Stand Guard for Poe House campaign reached its $50,000 emergency goal in September, but the work isn’t finished. Donations are still open to cover the ongoing protection and monitoring, and anything beyond the immediate needs goes toward the first phase of a planned expansion of the museum. The house is still open for tours.
Proceeds from all four Semprevive singles go to the campaign. If you’d like to give directly: https://poebaltimore.betterworld.org/campaigns/protect-poe-house-during-demolit
