Five Eight Team Up With James Hall for New Holiday Single

Listen to ‘Christmas Without You’ below

December 4, 2025December 5, 2025 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2025, Athens, Atlanta, Charlie Brown!, Christmas, Christmas Without You, Five Eight, Georgia, James Hall, Stiff Records

Mike Mantione of Five Eight and James Hall with some fans at Criminal Records in Atlanta, Georgia, after playing an in-store performance of their new holiday single “Christmas Without You.” (Image: Fiona Bloom)

The great state of Georgia is already ringing in the holiday season with the release of a new collaborative single between Athens pop-punk heroes Five Eight and Atlanta-based post-punk great James Hall.

Entitled “Christmas Without You,” the single — described by Hall as “Charlie Brown’s ‘Please Come Home For Christmas’ sent through the meat grinder at Stiff Records” — balances themes of loss and isolation with a catchy and surprisingly uplifting alternative rock kick that warms the spirit like an old Stax single.

For Hall and Five Eight’s Mike Mantione, longtime friends who have inspired each other for more than three decades, the collaboration felt overdue.

With both acts sharing a double-bill holiday show at Smith’s Olde Bar on Friday, Dec. 12, the timing was perfect for finally making music together —and for channeling some unvarnished, uncommercialized holiday spirit.

Five Eight x James Hall “Christmas Without You,” self-released 2025

“Mike sent me a melody he heard as a horn line — with ‘This is how it feels at Christmas time without you,’” Hall explains. “It worked as a blues lament. The verse had a bit of self-destruction to it, too. And being no stranger to coping techniques myself, I asked if I could answer it with ‘This is how I deal, if Christmas is without you.’”

“I was driving around late on a Monday night in Atlanta, remembering a Christmas I’d spent by myself,” Mantione adds. “When the people you want to be with are gone during the holidays, it’s brutal — you think everyone else is having some great Christmas. This melody popped in my head, so I got home, grabbed a guitar, and had a song fast. I sent it to James because I heard that horn. We never got the horn in — but the magic still happened. When I heard him sing it, I thought, ‘This is his song.’ He got to the heart of it.”

Watch the video for “Christmas Without You” below before it hits all streaming platforms tomorrow.