UK folk sisters The Unthanks have announced an Irish tour for this October.
Promoted by Singular Artists, the tour takes the now duo from the North East of England around Ireland to Dublin, Kilkenny, Waterford, Sligo, Cork, Navan, Donegal and Mayo.
The Unthanks have been described as “a take on tradition that flips so effortlessly between jazz, classical, ambient and post-rock, it makes any attempt to put a label on them a waste of time”.
Using the traditional music of the as a starting point, the influence of Miles Davis, Steve Reich, Sufjan Stevens, Robert Wyatt, Antony & The Johnsons, King Crimson and Tom Waits makes The Unthanks a unique band, earning them a Mercury Music Prize nomination and international acclaim along the way.
Tour dates:
The Unthanks tour dates
Thurs 5th Oct: Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny
Fri 6th Oct: Solstice arts Centre, Navan
Sat 7th Oct: An Grianan, Letterkenny
Sun 8th Oct: Town Hall Theatre, Westport
Mon 9th Oct: Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin
Wed 11th Oct: Hawks Well Theatre, Sligo
Thurs 12th Oct: Live at St Luke’s, Cork
Fri 13th Oct: Theatre Royal, Waterford
Tickets are available from singularartists.ie on 31st May at 10am.
The Folk sisters’ first, full non-project-based record since their 2015 BBC Folk Album Of The Year, Mount The Air is this year’s album Sorrows Away.
More about The Unthanks
The Unthanks tell stories that capture the imagination of children. They make music cutting edge enough to be BBC 6Music regulars. They can equally be found on Radios 2, 3 and 4, reframing history and drawing together the worlds of folk, jazz, orchestral, electronic and rock music. The believability of their storytelling is admired by some of our best storytellers – Mackenzie Crook, Elvis Costello, Maxine Peake, Nick Hornby, Martin Freeman, Robert Wyatt, Charles Hazelwood, Ben Myers and David Mitchell, to name a few.
In the seven intervening years since Mount The Air, The Unthanks have scaled up to self-composed projects with The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Charles Hazelwood’s Army of Generals, and right down to their roots for the unaccompanied live record, Diversions Vol 5. They’ve created song cycles from Emily Bronte’s poetry on her original piano, created site specific theatre with Maxine Peake, paid an entire album and 8 track EP’s worth of devotion to Molly Drake, and created the light and the dark in soundtracks for 6 hours’ worth of Mackenzie Crook’s beautiful BBC adaptation of the Worzel Gummidge books.
At the nucleus of a constantly evolving unit is the traditional upbringing of Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank and the arrangements and writing of composer, pianist, producer and Yorkshireman, Adrian McNally.
