Wellermen - Northern Sky

Northern Sky is The Wellermen putting their full range on display, four musicians from different corners of the world turning centuries-old folk tradition and contemporary songwriting into something built for a global audience they found almost by accident. The group became the originators of sea shanty TikTok, and what started as a viral moment, their versions of Misty Mountains and Hoist the Colours racking up billions of views, has turned into a genuine career, over 110 million streams on their debut and appearances everywhere from Ant and Dec to Last Week Tonight. This second album, recorded in a Surrey cottage, is the record where the four of them prove that moment wasn't a fluke, leaning fully into the storytelling tradition that made shanties work in the first place while writing enough original material to show they're not just interpreters. Wild Mountain Thyme carries genuine wistfulness, the group's harmonies suited perfectly to a song already built on longing. Their cover of Hurt sits somewhere between Nine Inch Nails' original rawness and Johnny Cash's weathered dignity, a genuinely difficult song to take on and one they clearly respect enough to not just imitate. The title track moves deliberately from something ominous into real uplift, and Tall Tales turns call-and-response into pure crowd-stomping fun. Twelve tracks that prove the shanty revival was never really about the trend. It was about people who actually know how to tell a story.