Edinburgh Folk and Food Festival 2025: The Unthanks

The logistics of turning central Edinburgh into the host for the world’s largest arts festival for only a month are such that Assembly have long set up their half of George Square early. The food stalls and bars make a pleasant venue for those long balmy summer evenings, and so, the Edinburgh Food Festival has made use of these prematurely erected venues for some years now. However, 2025 marks the first time the festival has expanded to become The Edinburgh Folk and Food Festival. So, both the gorgeous little Piccolo and the magnificent Spiegeltent Palais du Variete have, alongside the usual cooking demonstrations and food lectures, added in a series of folk music performances including tonight’s show by The Unthanks.

The Palais du Variete is a gorgeous fully seated venue now at the bottom of the Assembly’s Garden, having swapped places with the Piccolo from last year, and is virtually full this evening with a suitably mature, bearded and balding crowd for a folk gig. Support is provided by Paper Sparrows, a local trio of two guitar players and a double bassist. Whilst they are a Scottish folk band, the music they are playing is much more of the English folk tradition with Larks and Starlings featuring rather than something more Caledonian like Grouse or Capercaillie. They are charismatic lads who get shoulders swaying and toes tapping, which is as rousing a reaction as possible, and even managed to politely request a couple of sing-alongs. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable forty-five-minute warm up for the evening’s main event.

The Unthanks top song on Spotify is Magpie, which is appropriate not just because the Unthank sisters are from just outside Newcastle, but because, like the bird, they are experts at finding a whole range of treasures which they gladly share the full range of tonight. The first trinket they have to offer up is a rendition of Emily Brontë’s ‘The Night Is Darkening Round Me’ with simple piano accompaniment arranged by multi-instrumentalist Adrian McNally. Becky Unthank’s breathier voice leads and almost cracks on some of the high notes in this beautiful rendition. Moving on from Brontë to Molly Drake - mother of Nick Drake and whose private little ditties have fuelled two Unthanks albums - now the whole band take to the stage for ‘What Can a Song Do to You?’. The lyrics seem charmingly naive when set immediately after those of Emily Brontë. A traditional Scottish folk song about a selkie follows, which is more standard fare but still manages to captivate. By the time they launch into a haunting rendition of ‘I Wish, I Wish’, their sound has grown to enthral the whole audience in its mournful revery.

Teesside folk singer Graeme Miles’ ‘A Great North River’ is juxtaposed with Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’, giving the ironic anti-Falklands song more bite when following this sombre ode to those actually working the Teesside docks who might’ve benefitted from that rumour going around town. The Magpies’ eyes are next drawn to Thomas Dekker’s ‘Cradle Song’ - a lullaby famously popularised in The Beatles’ ‘Golden Slumbers’ - which forms the basis of ‘Last Lullaby’; a heartbreaking lament for those children who lost their lives at the Foundling Hospital in London.

Possibly the most uplifting song of the evening is ‘The King of Rome’, the inspiring tale of a pigeon racer from Derby, which lifts the room. On record the lyrics of “I can’t fly but me pigeons can, and when I set them free, it’s just like part of me gets lifted up on shining wings” are accompanied by a full brass band, but tonight the harmonium more than suffices to fill the tent with awe. This is swiftly followed by ‘Magpie’, a return to the darker tone, as this Gothic masterpiece sends a shiver down the spine.

The Unthank sisters’ father was also a folk musician, and his influence is referenced often in their tales of song origins, notably so with ‘Greatham’ and ‘Lucky Gilchrist’. The former is taken from a Mummer’s play revived by Unthank Snr and a boxing day tradition for the girls growing up. The latter a rare completely original composition about a friend of their father’s, and perhaps the liveliest song of the evening.

They bring the set to an end by encouraging a rousing sing-along of ‘Here’s the Tender Coming’, a seventeenth century song from the North East warning of a warship coming to press gang the locals into the Navy. After the encore, the audience are again asked to lend their voices to ‘Farewell Shanty’ a Cornish sea shanty of overlapping duets that rounds off this beautiful evening.

The full tent suggests that this inaugural edition of the Edinburgh Folk and Food Festival has been a success. If it can provide evenings as captivating as this, then long may it continue to fill July’s evenings with fabulous folk.