The Unthanks’ In Winter is a dream-like winter fantasia, embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic of seasons. Moving in and out of focus – like a memory – a bittersweet hymnal to our shared winter experience. Echoes of winter tunes known throughout the western world mix with the traditional and the newly written.
In Winter is an abstract new work that captures the warmth and nostalgia of the festive season and the chill and darkness of the winter months. You will hear what a Tyneside band playing a German Christmas song in the style of The Beach Boys sounds like! A Spanish carol performed by English folkies through the filter of Tom Waits. A newly written tribute to the NHS. An abstract take on A Ceremony of Carols by Britten. Traditional wassails and old stories coloured with folk noir and traces of Vincent Guaraldi’s Merry Christmas Charlie Brown. In typical magpie style, The Unthanks collect and reimagine.
Using the traditional music of the North East of England as a starting point, the influence of Miles Davis, Steve Reich, Sufjan Stevens, Robert Wyatt, Antony & The Johnsons, King Crimson and Tom Waits makes The Unthanks a unique band, earning them a Mercury Music Prize nomination and international acclaim along the way.
‘They run from the very root of folk music to the very tip of the branch.’
– Elvis Costello