A Christmas list for you and Unthanks for everything
Is there anything more Christmassy than seeing the Unthanks belt out a huge set of winter-flecked songs from an album that doesn’t even exist yet?
A wonderful selection of songs from Northumberland’s finest musicians that skirt around carols, tradition, mummers’ Boxing Day plays, folklore, and cut a deeper seam into themes of celebration, renewal, hope and delight. With clogs, clarinet, much instrument-swapping and festive cheer.
Having seen them several times over the years in different settings (the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge and as the house band for the Hull 2017 play about Lillian Billoca and the headscarf revolutionaries among them) it feels like they’ve run through out grown-up lives like a seam of Northumberland coal. Beautiful.
It’s been a great end to the year for those with an interest in folklore, fandom, education, algorave, wildlife and journalism (that’d be me then!) so here’s a few links that have captured my attention as we head towards 2024.
Coding is the new clubbing — and of course Sheffield is at the forefront of Algorave. The Sheffield Tribune continues to nail quality alternative journalism in 2023, together with the masterful gently-quiet reportage of David Bocking’s It’s Black O’er Bill’s Mothers, and this feature on Algorave is further boosted with a link to help you explore how to take to your Acer and bash out a future dissonant bleep anthem like you’re a Sleaford Mod. Hours of fun.
Folklore fans have been in for a treat as we approach the Winter Solstice with the 50th anniversary of The Wicker Man, and a glut of shows and re-tellings. My personal favourites are the great Katy J Pearson’s entire re-working of the Wicker Man soundtrack on Bandcamp and the behind the scenes photographs from The Guardian. Resolved to visit the places where Lord Summerisle and Lindsay Kemp gallivanted to a Paul Giovanni tune in 2024.
Similarly as old as the hills and as young as the day are Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, who were mere lads when the Wicker Man came out, singing folk ditties like Grapefruit Moon, and, er, Search And Destroy. 50 years on, they co-headlined a 6 Music Special where they try to out-gravel, out-Hoagy and out-seriously-grizzled-old-buzzard each other. I lose the thread of who’s who, but when the music is that good, who cares!
And keeping the so-old-it’s-entirely new theme, Lisa O’ Neill has been one of my highlights of this year — a wonderful Irish voice that sounds so well-weathered it could be from the 1800s, or the future. Her duet with Glen Hansard at Shane Macgowan’s funeral brought new dimensions to the Kirsty MacColl parts — she can swear in a packed church of mourners any time she likes. Great performances from, among others, Nick Cave and Declan O’ Rourke too.
Away from the world of music, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own academic development, and resolved to get my CPD well and truly up to speed in 2024. Maybe it’s something about being photographed with lovely colleagues in the library of the Institute of Civil Engineers what’s done it, but looking forward to resuming this part of the journey as I head for my half-century.
Education stories that I’ve read and admired over the year include this from Rebecca Nicholson (a great writer who I’ve followed since her lovely piece about her hometown Scunthorpe not being the least romantic place in Britain many steely moons back) about going back to University in your 40s and the way it’s changed; departing Hallam VC Chris Husbands’ piece about the future of the sector as he approaches retirement, and Laura Lightfinch’s fantastic piece about what the future holds for Generation Alpha in the university realm — as my kids hit the tweenage years it’s never been more relevant for us as a family. I’ve also enjoyed Clare Jenkins’s paper, Is Human Life In A Press Release about the decline in print journalism, and recognise much in her descriptions of the world of local reporting that I first encountered as a scribe for the Bedfordshire Times back in the early 90s. That feeling of “it’s not what it used to be, journalism” was as prevalent then as it is now, funnily. Thank goodness we’ve got the Tribune, the Mill, Now Then and all manner of new variations to keep it alive.
And, finally, I have been really enjoying the Paul Weller Fan Podcast, Desperately Seeking Paul, which after 179 episodes since Lockdown interviewing everyone apart from the Modfather, finally gets to sit down with him for a final, triumphant episode 180. And what an episode it is. So, keep going, then, and you will be rewarded. And with that in mind, and whatever your stripe, here’s to a restful season and a renewed new year.
