Bunch Of Fives: Crane House

Newcastle pop-folk outfit CRANE HOUSE release their latest track Shadow, a track that digs into what sits beneath the surface, confronting the darker corners of the psyche we’d rather keep hidden. Sonically

Sonically, the track unfurls in a haze of ethereal tones and folky fiddle, the soulful, Stevie Nicks‑esque vocals drifting in around the mix. As it gathers pace, tribal rhythms pulse beneath soaring melodies, rising together into a cinematic crescendo where every element locks into place.

Here, CRANE HOUSE, Top 5 Northern Folk Stories…

Northern England is threaded with stories, creatures in the rivers, witches in the stones, shadows on the hillsides. These legends aren’t just tales whispered by firesides; they’re part of the landscape itself, soaked into soil of the moors, wrapped in the roots of the forests and whispered in the salty air of our coastlines.

For CRANE HOUSE, these stories echo the tensions we’re drawn to in our music: beauty and menace, calm and shadow, lore and wonder.

Here are five of our favourite folk tales that haunt the North and hum quietly beneath our music.

1. The Easington Hare: Witch in Disguise
Along the windswept Durham coast, hunters once chased the Easington Hare, always vanishing, always impossibly quick. When a hound finally wounded it, the trail led to a crooked cottage where an elderly woman sat tending the same injury. A witch, they said, slipping between skins and slipping through Hawthorne Dene unseen.

Now Jeannie’s mum lives in Easington, down at The Barn, and sometimes we half joke-half wonder, if she might just be the ancient witch herself, shifting through the centuries with the same watchful, old magic.

The Barn at Easington feels like CRANE HOUSE’s spiritual home. The wide, open sky; the wild coast; the wind that bites at your cheeks.

2. Nanny Powler: The Skerne Water-Witch
Along the River Skerne, people once whispered about Nanny Powler – a half-human, half-spirit presence clinging to the river’s edge, calling to wanderers with voices drifting from the water. Children were warned never to lean too close, not to listen too carefully to the sound of the water, for that is how she drew you in. A voice in the current. A shape just beneath the surface.

For us, Nanny Powler captures a sound we chase often: the deceptive stillness, the undertow of something unseen. This tension of beauty above and darkness below runs through so much of our songwriting.

3. Long Meg and Her Daughters: The Stone Circle Witches
On the Cumbrian moors stands Long Meg and Her Daughters, a stone circle wrapped in mist. Legend says the stones were once witches, frozen in punishment for dancing on the Sabbath.

No one ever counts the stones the same way twice, as if the witches are not quite still.

Witches in folklore are often feared and misunderstood, yet here they are immortalised, dancing across time.

We love this one, purely for the themes about women’s power, resilience, and refusal to be silenced. This mystery and defiance echoes in our music, which mostly centres around the inner worlds of womanhood.

4. The Mermaid of Staithes: The Singing Tide
Along the cliffs near Whitby, the people of Staithes once spoke of a mermaid whose voice drifted across the water at dusk. Some heard a warning, others, an invitation. But those who followed her song into the surf were never seen again.

One fisherman claimed he saw her perched on a rock, combing her pale hair. She looked up, filled with longing or sorrow, and slipped beneath the waves. After, a huge storm followed, the village whispered that her song had turned to grief.

Being deeply drawn to the open water, the Mermaid of Staithes captures everything we love in northern folklore… The melancholy and wildness of the water, it’s restless pull and quiet longing that feels both ancient and endless.

5. The Barghest: The Black Dog of Northern England
Across misty lanes and quiet fields, the Barghest prowls – a spectral black dog with eyes that burn like embers. Some say it moves with the wind; others claim it can shapeshift, but it’s the monstrous dog, who haunts the lonely roads at dawn, that people fear most. ‘A harbinger of death’ they said, ‘a shadow that follows too closely’.

We have a song called ‘Family Stray’, where the Barghest becomes a metaphor for the black dog of depression: that creeping, shifting presence that can feel both familiar and unbearable. A haunting figure- inherited, or a soul sold at the crossroads? Who knows, but the shadow the Barghest casts – part omen, part reflection – is the same kind that moves through us in quieter, more human ways.

Shadow, our most recent single, steps into that dim outline: the darker, messier parts of being human – the thoughts we tend to tuck away. Instead of fleeing from them, the song leans in, sitting with the shadows of our deeper psyche and finding our voice in the dark.