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Nearfield Artists present

The Unthanks in Winter

Mon 16 Dec 2024

When December draws near, The Unthanks will release and tour In Winter - a double-album, gatefold, dream-like winter fantasia, embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic of seasons.

In Winter is an abstract new work that captures the warmth and nostalgia of the festive season, the chill and darkness of the winter months, and the reflective ritualism’s of the turn of the year; the end and beginning of the circle of life. 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 Benjamin 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, at once unique and familiar, inspired but natural and effortless. In Winter features a new sound palette for The Unthanks, incorporating vibraphone, clarinet and saxophone into the core band that features vocal harmony, piano, violin, double bass, guitars and percussion.

“The Unthanks are capable of such beauty that sometimes I can hardly bear to listen to them.”

Martin Freeman

“There are few times when you discover a band and they stalk immediately to the heart of everything you love and hold dear.”

Maxine Peake

They run from the very root of folk music to the very tip of the branch.”

Elvis Costello