Smoke & Oakum

Scottish postman Nathan Evans was the ‘Wellerman’ who kicked off TikTok’s shanty craze, but Bristol’s Longest Johns are not far behind in ShantyTok popularity, with their own take on ‘Wellerman’, an 1800s whaling song from Australia, alongside their popular YouTube videos featuring the quartet belting out shanties from home. Millions of listeners have since joined the crew, and shanty, one of the first musical styles to combine African call-and-response with European song forms, is having a big moment.

In recent years, Fisherman’s Friends have been the go-to shanty men, while Bellowhead gave it a good heave-ho across their albums. The Longest Johns have been at it since 2012, when they got together at a barbecue, and with four albums behind them, this latest, featuring Seth Lakeman on ‘The Workers Song’, sees them signed to Decca and prepping sell-out UK and US tours. And the record’s got plenty going for it – shantying up The Copper Family’s ‘Thousands or More’, adding big bass drum and fiddle to the brilliant ‘Hog Eye Man’, and rolling out a barrel of melancholy on ‘Wayfaring Stranger’. A black spot in your glass if you fail to sing along, mateys.