Rachel Unthank & the Winterset

Transcendent and grounded music folds around unsentimental old, new and imaginatively borrowed stories of booze, brawls, abuse, loss, fear, infantile death, depravity, and sorrow.

Dancing down the leftfield and singing in their own lilting Geordie accents, Rachel Unthank & The Winterset are the “inheritors, curators and gleeful distorters” (Ian MacMillan) of Tyneside’s traditions. Discreetly provocative arrangements draw on elements of blues, jazz, music hall, burlesque cabaret, classical, and leftfield contemporary music, making their take on folk music peerless, fearless and wholeheartedly brave.

Fans as disparate as Robert Wyatt, Kate Rusby, Paul Morley, Nic Jones, Phil Jupitus and Joan As Policewoman have joined the chorus of adulation from the press.