The Unthanks in Winter

The Unthanks In Winter

When December draws near, The Unthanks will release and tourIn Winter- a double-album,gatefold, dream-like winter fantasia, embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic ofseasons. Moving in and out of focus – like a memory – a bittersweet hymnal to our shared winterexperience. Echoes of winter tunes known throughout the western world, mix with the traditionaland the newly written, all passed with great care and love through The Unthanks filter.

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 ritualisms of the turn of the year;the end and beginning of the circle of life. You will hear what a Tyneside band playing a GermanChristmas song in the style of The Beach Boys sounds like! A Spanish carol performed by Englishfolkies through the filter of Tom Waits. A newly written tribute to the NHS. An abstract take on ACeremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. Traditional wassails and old stories coloured with folknoir and traces of Vincent Guaraldi’s Merry Christmas Charlie Brown. In typical magpie style, TheUnthanks 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 andsaxophone into the core band that features vocal harmony, piano, violin, double bass, guitars and percussion.

The Unthanks tell stories that capture children. They make music cutting edge enoughto be BBC 6Music regulars. They can equally be found on Radios 2, 3 and 4, reframinghistory and drawing together the worlds of folk, jazz, orchestral, electronic and rockmusic. The believability of their storytelling is admired by some of our best storytellers -Mackenzie Crook, Elvis Costello, Maxine Peake, Nick Hornby, Martin Freeman, RobertWyatt, Charles Hazelwood, Ben Myers and David Mitchell, to name a few.At the nucleus of a constantly evolving unit is the traditional upbringing of Tynesidesisters Rachel and Becky Unthank and the arrangements and writing of Barnsley composer,pianist and producer, Adrian McNally.

The Unthanks have been described as “a take on tradition that flips so effortlesslybetween jazz, classical, ambient and post-rock, it makes any attempt to put a label onthem a waste of time”.Using the traditional music of the North East of England as a starting point, the influenceof Miles Davis, Steve Reich, Sufjan Stevens, Robert Wyatt, Antony & The Johnsons, KingCrimson and Tom Waits makes The Unthanks a unique band, earning them a Mercury Music Prize nomination and international acclaim along the way.