The Unthanks – St Mary’s church, Bruton – Friday 5th December 2025

Northumbria’s finest, The Unthanks, celebrate 20 years with a career-spanning tour of small venues

BEAUTIFUL ACOUSTICS

I travel a lot to see folk music, frequently hundreds of miles from Exeter to Inverness, Cambridge to Kendal, Hereford to Hartlepool, so for one of the country’s best-loved bands to turn up around 50 yards from my back gate was a delightful change. The Unthanks are touring a set of small, intimate venues in celebration of spending 20 years on the road, and so have ended up in the chilly St Mary’s church in Bruton, Somerset on this Friday night in December.

This is a semi-acoustic tour – not the absolute minimalism of the 2019 “unaccompanied”, but still just the basic four piece, with Adrian McNally’s piano and Niopha Keegan’s fiddle supplementing the voices of Becky and Rachel Unthank. The beautiful acoustics of the church really made the voices and simple arrangements glow, and held the sold-out audience wrapt from beginning to end.

OBLIGATORY CLOG DANCING

The Unthanks recorded catalogue is a diverse thing; as well as their “mainstream” albums they frequently embark on side projects around favourite poets, local history or the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, and the show encompassed most of these, even the brass band record. The only exception was their most recent Sorrow’s Away; tonight was about the “old” stuff.

They kicked off the set with On A Monday Morning, the folk standard about a lost weekend they originally recorded as Rachel Unthank and the Winterset back in 2005, then launched into possibly my favourite Unthanks song, Madam from the Mount The Air album. Another Mount the Air track, Hawthorn follows.

A pair of songs from the Songs of the Shipyards album – Big Steamers and a masterful version of Shipbuilding – led into a song they created for a recent theatre project, Keen and Cry and Weep. For Dad then segued into their “TV songs” – Magpie, used to such great effect in The Detectorists, and The Scarecrow Knows, from their Wurzel Gummidge soundtrack.

The first half concluded with another older song, Blue’s Gaen Oot o’the Fashion, from the second Winterset album, with the obligatory clog dancing.

HORRIFIC AND MOVING

The second half kicked off the with the women’s rights anthem Bread And Roses, followed by King of Rome – about a Derbyshire pigeon fancier. You get plenty of lyrical variety with The Unthanks.

The horrific and moving Testimony Of Patience Kershaw provided a highlight of the show, with its real-life story of a pit girl from the 1840s, told in her own words. Cherry Tree Carol saw a nod to the season, as we were in a church after all.

The fact that the poems and songs of Molly Drake are so little known is an oversight that The Unthanks seem determined to correct, and Never Pine For The Old Love and Dream Your Dreams showed why they are right to do so. Sandwiched between the two was an excellent cover of Robert Wyatt’s Sea Song – Wyatt’s music sounds so right sung by three women in harmony!

The encore was the title track from the first record to bear The Unthanks name, Here’s The Tender Coming, returning the set to their north east folk roots.

FANTASTIC HARMONISING

An evening of Unthanks music can’t really be described as cheery, but the fantastic harmonising of Keenan and the Unthank sisters leave you uplifted, however dark the themes they often explore. And while new music is always fascinating, sometimes a “greatest hits” set of familar tunes can be just what you need on a cold, wet December evening.

The rest of the intimate venues tour is sold out, but The Unthanks return in January with the Northern Sinfonia for what should be a very different rendition of their back catalogue.

The Unthanks online: Website/ Instagram / Facebook

All live photography by Stuart Anderton

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