Sleep well, chaps.

The Unthanks aren’t always prog, but they’re always superb! They’re celebrating their tenth year with some gigging and a new release. If you’re fortunate enough to be in the area, make sure you get to see them.

The Unthanks cap both 10 years and a remarkable year with an intimate Autumn tour of small venues, followed by handful of December shows with their full 10 piece ensemble, including standing and seated London shows, and a homecoming show at Hexham Abbey.

Rather than embarking on some grand celebration, The Unthanks are quietly marking their 10th anniversary this year with a short tour of small intimate spaces, with a pared back line-up, their feeling being that if folk music is a lifelong pursuit, 10 years is just a drop in the ocean.

Small venues means tickets are likely to sell out quick. All show details are below. or on our website here.

And in the same respect, rather than putting out an exploitative ‘best of’, there will be a release of rarities, live recordings, memorabilia and unreleased material will accompany the tour.

The 5 piece intimate tour, featuring material from right across their time, will be following in December by handful of 10 piece anniversary shows to crown the year, including both standing and seated London shows at Scala and Union Chapel respectively, plus a homecoming show in the beautiful surroundings of Hexham Abbey.

The shows mark both 10 years and a remarkable year. In wall-to-wall four and five star reviews, this year’s Mount the Air has been described as “quite simply, a masterpiece”, “music that asks you to consider everything you know and un-think it”, “an epic that Sigur Rós or Elbow would be proud of”, “folk on a different level – airborne, perhaps”, “the first truly jaw-dropping album of 2015”, “both wildly experimental and comfortably familiar”, “gorgeously orchestrated”, “one of the best records I’ve ever reviewed”, “kind of beautiful, kind of blue”, and “beautiful yet stark, orchestral yet intimate, clever yet with simple purity, dark yet kissed with light, ascendant yet earthy and rooted.”

Summer Festival Dates

27.05.15 Hay Festival Hay on Wye

27.06.15 Glastonbury Festival

(Pyramid Stage, The Unthanks with Orchestra, conducted by Charles Hazlewood)

10.07.15 Earagail Arts Festival Ireland

11.07.15 Folk at the Hall Trelawnyd, N Wales (Headliners)

19.07.15 Folk by the Oak Hatfield, Herts.

24.07.15 Folkfest Killarney Kerry, Ireland

26.07.15 Deer Shed Festival Topcliffe, N Yorks (Headliners)

01.08.15 Cambridge Folk Festival

02.08.15 Port Eliot Festival (Headliners)

14.08.15 Stockholm Culture Festival

22.08.15 Home Gathering Newcastle (Headlined and curated by The Unthanks)

23.08.15 FolkEast Glemham, Suffolk (Headliners)

29.08.15 Solfest, Silloth, Lake District (Headliners)

30.08.15 Greenbelt, Kettering (Headliners)

05.09.15 End of the Road Dorset

06.09.15 Moseley Folk Festival West Mids

25.09.15 Gaiety Theatre Douglas, Isle of Man (on sale v soon)

27.09.15 Queens Cross Church Aberdeen (on sale end of May)

17.10.15 Homegrown Bury, Castle Armoury Drill Hall (Headliners)

10th Anniversary Intimate 5-Piece Tour

22.10.15 The Customs House South Shields 0191 454 1234

23.10.15 The Witham Barnard Castle 01833 631 107

24.10.15 The Dukes Lancaster 01524 598500

25.10.15 Wem Town Hall 01939 238 279

26.10.15 The Atrix Bromsgrove 01527 577330

27.10.15 SJE Oxford 0845 413 4444

28.10.15 Holy Trinity Church Guildford 01483 566007

29.10.15 Theatre Royal Margate 01843 292795

30.10.15 St Mary’s in the Castle Hastings 01323 841414

31.10.15 The Stables Milton Keynes 01908 280800

01.11.15 Drill Hall Lincoln 01522 873894

06.11.15 Middlewich Town Hall 01606 833434

07.11.15 Trades Club Hebden Bridge (Standing Saturday Night Show) 01422 845 265

08.11.15 Trades Club Hebden Bridge (Seated Matinee Show) 01422 845 265

08.11.15 Trades Club Hebden Bridge (Seated Evening Show) 01422 845 265

13.11.15 Theatre by the Lake Keswick 017687 74411

14.11.15 Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough 01723 370541

15.11.15 All Saints Church Pocklington 01759 301547

10th Anniversary 10-Piece Shows

04.12.15 Hexham Abbey (10th Anniversary Homecoming Show) 01434 652477

05.12.15 The Great British Folk Festival Skegness 0300 1006648

09.12.15 Scala London (Standing 10th Anniversary 10 piece show) 0845 4134444

10.12.15 Union Chapel London (Seated 10th Anniversary 10 piece show) 0845 4134444

The second mini-interview with uber-talent Pete Jones of Tiger Moth Tales is now available on YouTube. In this one, he talks about the instruments he plays. Once again, the interview is tinged with his delightlful sense of humour.

Watch it here.

The hugely talented Pete Jones, the man behind Tiger Moth Tales, and its superb debut album ‘Cocoon’, has just started publishing a series of short interviews on YouTube, which will no doubt be of interest to all Mothingtons (as he has whimsically named his fans.)

You can find the first video here, in which Pete talks about his earliest musical memories. What a bloody nice chap!

A recent Facebook post from Big Big Train’s own Greg Spawton – “1st June” with this rather marvellous illustration of The Green Man suggests that something amazing’s on its way…