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Welsh carols, Derbyshire ballads and Cajun drinking songs: the best folk music for Christmas and winter
As the Unthanks release a new collection of wintry folk, we pick out other seasonal albums full of variously warm, sparkling and sharp songcraft
Well-known carols and traditional tunes sit around lesser-known pearls such as Middlesbrough singer Graeme Miles’s gorgeous evocation of weather and wonder Dark December, Hugh Lupton and Chris Wood’s heartbreaking Bleary Winter, and parting song Dear Companions, with the band backed by a choir of 60 from their popular residential singing courses. A musician whose other work dug into the roots of US folk and blues, these recordings are among his gentlest, prettiest output, although a bracing sharpness comes in the spiky harmonics beginning The Bells of St Mary’s and the swooping slide techniques on spiritual Go I Will Send Thee. Its cover art aping the Sex Pistols’ debut (Never Mind the Bollocks: Here’s the Plygain, it screams), this anthology on legendary Welsh punk label Anrhefn Records celebrates the carols sung in pre-dawn Christmas Day services in 18th and 19th-century Wales.
Or read this on The Guardian
