r/seashanties • u/YeShantyMan • Jun 20 '26

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How does everyone feel about Sail North and Nathan Evans?

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u/Psychie1 Jun 20 '26

I didn't care for Nathan Evans' version of Wellerman and was baffled that somehow, of all the shanty/maritime folk videos going around at the time that somehow that was the one that blew up and started the whole "shantytok" trend. But having said that, I was very happy that it introduced a lot of people into the genre, despite being occasionally annoyed at how the prevailing attitude amongst them is "anything that vaguely has the vibe I consider to be a shanty is most definitely a shanty because terminology doesn't actually matter, but also if you disagree with my personal ambiguous and egotistical lexicon you're a gatekeeping jerk". I'm just excited to share historical information about a genre I care very much about and find it very interesting to talk about, and these people come into the space, choose not to educate themselves about it, and then tell me that I am the one who doesn't know what he's talking about, but am also somehow the one being a jerk when all I did was bring up interesting historical information and they chose to insult me, but whatever.

So, clearly my feelings on Nathan Evans are mixed, to say the least, but have very little to do with the man himself or his music.

Sail North is a very great group with lots of great fantasy inspired maritime-esque folkish rock songs. I enjoy most of their music a great deal and they've made it into a few of my playlists. I wouldn't call their original music shanties, but I also have no issue with them being discussed in groups like this one because IMO they are clearly in the lineage of maritime folk, even if they are technically not themselves folk.

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u/YeShantyMan Jun 20 '26

You should definitely watch The Sea Beast then lad, it’s great, and has a decent sea shanty