The Futureheads have announced details of a new festive album ‘Christmas’ and an accompanying UK tour.
The Sunderland indie band will release their first ever holidays-themed album on November 21. It will be comprised largely of reinterpretations of yuletide classics, as well as two original compositions, and you can pre-order it here.
A brand new song ‘The Coldest Winter In 100 Years’ will appear on the record, as will the band’s 2010 release ‘Christmas Was Better In The 80s’, the first festive song the band ever released.
‘Christmas’ has been arranged, recorded and produced by the band themselves and also includes covers of favourites such as ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’, Pretenders‘ ‘2000 Miles’, Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop The Cavalry’ and Paul McCartney‘s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’.
To coincide with the album’s release, the band will also play four exclusive shows in December, including two hometown shows at Sunderland’s The Fire Station, and shows in Glasgow and EartH in London.
Tickets for the shows go on sale on Monday (September 29) at 10am and you will be able to find yours here.
The Futureheads will play:
DECEMBER 2025
8 – Glasgow, Oran Mor
19 – Sunderland, The Fire Station
20 – Sunderland, The Fire Station
22 – London, EartH Theatre
The band have said: “We are proud to have self-produced this collection of recordings. We are also proud and grateful to be still making music together after all these years and this album is a celebration of that. We love being in this band and when in good spirits, we make a special sound.”
Quipping about recording the songs during a summer heatwave, they added: “If you’re going to make a Christmas album, and want it done and dusted (or should that be polished) in time to release during the appropriate season, then sweaty summer sessions are a must! And oh boy, did we have some sweaty ones.”
‘Christmas’ tracklist:
- ‘Carol Of The Bells’
- ‘Stop The Cavalry’
- ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’
- ‘What’s This?’
- ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’
- ‘The Twelve Days Of Christmas’
- ‘Wonderful Christmastime’
- ‘2000 Miles’
- ‘The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years’
- ‘Christmas Was Better In The 80s’
Elsewhere, the band’s frontman Barry Hyde released a solo album ‘Miners’ Ballads’ in March via Sirenspire Records, a concept record that explored the coal mining heritage of the North East of England.
In other news, Hyde recently spoke to NME about his experience with The Futureheads opening for The Killers on the 2005 NME Awards tour, which also included Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs.
“Retrospectively, it was an exciting time for British indie music, and I would love there to be a positive nostalgia trip for the Noughties. Looking back, we were so young. Our drummer was only 16 and wasn’t even legally allowed in the venues for our first tours of America.”
Hyde also recalled the 2005 NME Awards ceremony, which marked the end of the tour. “That was a heavy-duty Noughties night! I was gutted because I went up to Simon Pegg at the bar and told him how much I loved his sitcom Spaced, and he wasn’t very friendly,” he said. “I ended up winning the award that nobody wants – when NME gave me The Drunkest Person of the Night award!”
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