A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane Square, a former place of worship marking its 20th year as a concert hall.
The Unthanks, too, are approaching their 20th anniversary, and their winter tour of 2024 draws from their magical new album, In Winter, a double set that has drawn comparison to that ultimate winter album in British folk music – The Waterson’s Frost & Fire.
For their celebration of the season, and of its spirits, they draw on big songs such as The Coventry Carol and The Cherry Tree Carol, with their strange mix of northern European folklore and Biblical narrative, as well as newly self-penned pieces like Becky Unthank’s “River River”, a song steeped in the forces of nature that don’t ever sleep and composed, she tells us, while walking with her one-year-old.
To open the concert, and scattered throughout, McNally at the keyboard embarks on some spectral deconstructions of familiar Christmas tunes – the likes of “Come All Ye Faithful” and “In the Bleak Midwinter”. Floating into the ear on the delicate solo vibes of Will Hammond, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, sounds like the spirograph of a memory of a childhood dream of family Christmas.
Interspersing the carols are covers of “Bleary Winter” by Chris Wood and Middlesbrough songwriter Graeme Miles (a favourite of The Young’Uns), as well as the Unthanks’ father, George and his “Tar Barrel in Dale” and a paean to the people who make up the NHS, “Nurse Emmanuel”, co-written with poet Vanessa Lampert.
On stage, sisters Rachel and Becky and musical arranger and pianist Adrian McNally are joined by a many-textured band of players –, Will Hammond’s drums and vibes, the low, breathy sax and clarinet from Faye MacCalman, longtime band member Niopha Keegan on fiddle, guitarist Chris Price and bassist Dan Rogers. MacCalman’s sax and Keegan’s fiddle, blending with Hammond’s celestial vibes and the supporting framework of spare, spectral electric guitar, double bass, harmonium and piano, creates wonderful tone beds for the sisters’ voices to rise and expand upon.
On the likes of Miles’s “Dark December”, a song that finds its warmth in the cold and chilly heat of the winter solstice, the voices are as welcoming as lights burning in a window, coal in the grate. The “Gower Wassail” is stripped down to muted drums and eddying guitar, the vibraphone and clarinet blending their tones to create beautiful shimmering textures, while McNally interjects short solo piano interludes, telling how his take on “12 Days of Christmas” was commissioned for the windows display at Fenwick in Newcastle. You can hear it adorning one of those slightly melancholy John Lewis adverts as well.
Both sisters, singing solo and together, know how to bring out the drama of a song, and its melodrama too – they are great singers, and great actors of what a song needs to come alive, and it is with a chorale of female harmonies on the “Coventry Carol” that the Unthanks’ In Winter concert reaches its apogee. As they conclude their encore – Becky’s parting song “Dear Companion” – a sold-out Cadogan Hall rises as one to return a standing ovation for a properly magical performance. It’s the last of their In Winter tour, and it’s obviously gone well – with McNally announcing that nearly all the merch was sold out. Even the tea towels. Now there’s a Christmas miracle…
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