In Winter

A winter album has been on the to-do list of this brilliantly inventive art-folk ensemble for a decade and a half and, of course, theirs is no tawdry festive cash-in. Singing sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, plus producer and arranger Adrian McNally, have not only collected most of the universally familiar tunes before comprehensively re-thinking them – try to imagine what German Christmas song ‘O Tannenbaum’ could sound like celebrated by a Tyneside band playing in the style of The Beach Boys, or a Spanish carol performed by English folkies ‘through the filter of Tom Waits’ (‘Carol of the Birds’) – then set them amid a soundscape designed, explains Adrian, ‘to feel like a hazy dream of a childhood memory of Christmas.’ Alongside the superficially more familiar fare, Becky provides new songs ‘River River’ and ‘Dear Companions’, the latter featuring the voices of 60 people recorded on one of the band’s popular singing residentials, while McNally contributes NHS tribute ‘Nurse Emmanuel’, co-written with prize-winning poet Vanessa Lampert. Wrap up warmly for an artful triumph.