Home

Home is the most cheerful record Yemi has made and it was written for a reason that is not cheerful at all. His own description of the brief is four words long: written to combat loneliness.

That explains the shape of it. An up-tempo indie-pop Christmas single is an odd vehicle for that subject, and the oddness is the point — the song does not sit with the ache, it goes round it, and the good humour is deliberate rather than decorative. He is careful, in the same breath, to name the people it is for: those who will not make it home, and those for whom the season is harder than it looks.

As a child, Christmas was a special time for me and my family. There’s no better feeling than making it home at such a wonderful time of the year.Yemi Alafifuni

The reflex is old. Years before this record he wrote an essay about loneliness and closed it on a line from the psalms — that God plants the lonely in a family — which sits one verse below the line the rest of this catalogue is built on. Home is that verse as a Christmas single.

The title is doing more work than a Christmas single usually asks of one. Home is always where the heart is, he says — and our home is in Christ. Which is why the song can be about missing a house and about arriving somewhere else entirely, and why the name in the chorus is Emmanuel: God with us.

I am aware that not all get to enjoy the season, and for those whose hearts need a little cheer, this song is for you. And if you’re away much like I am sometimes, I hope you make it home to be with people you love. Never forget that you are not alone. In fact, no one deserves to be alone, whether naughty or nice.On who it is actually for

It is also the best-sounding thing here: the only release in the catalogue mixed in Dolby Atmos, produced by Jamie Adrian Snell and Alexander Charles Elliott. It was announced as part of The Prodigals, a body of work that never arrived.