The Unthanks. Diversions Vol. 5 – Live And Unaccompanied

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live-and-unaccompanied-albums264973638One of the most inventive groups currently working in the UK folk field, The Unthanks are somewhat unique in their ability to conjure up a sound which seems as ancient as the oldest oaks in the land while also being experimental and celebrating the likes of Robert Wyatt’s jazzpoetry. Their catalogue is peppered with diversions as when they decided to record an album of songs written by Nick Drake’s mother but throughout it all, one thing stands out, their glorious singing. This disc showcases those voices, Becky and Rachel Unthank with Niopha Keegan completing the trio. Recorded live over several concerts, the trio sing unaccompanied, conjoined throughout and sounding by turns traditional, spooky and occasionally humorous. The best moments are chilling as myths and legends and old, old folk tales are sung deliciously. Fans of The Wickerman and of those 1970’s kids’ programmes which had eldritch theme songs will be well delighted by what’s on offer here.

It’s not all weird sisters singing as they dig into their local roots for the earthy Geordie Wedding Suite, sung magnificently in local dialect, while Where’ve Yer Bin Dick is a very short and wonderfully silly street song. However, the meat of the album is in those moments when the three singers send shivers down the spine. Magpie is perhaps best known via its inclusion on the Beeb’s Detectorists and they deliver a grand version here. Griesly Bride, originally an Australian poem, is wintry and chilling with a lycanthropic twist while Karan Casey’s Weary of Lying Alone seems to have been dredged from a misty peat bog. Maenwhile they wring out all of the melancholy and loss of Molly Drake’s Poor Mum but perhaps the best moment of the album is the stupendous We Picked Apples In The Graveyard, a song by Richard Dawson. With its bucolic lyrics tinged with menace, it’s just wonderful. They swing into a powerful Bread And Roses and close the album with an even more powerful moment as their audience joins in on Farewell Shanty before an ambient hum fades the song out.

Live And Unaccompanied can’t be faulted. An apacella album of folk songs might seem a hard sell but let it in to your life and you’ll be well rewarded. Simply superb.

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The Unthanks. Mount The Air. Rabble Rouser

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Mount The Air, the first album from award winning folkies The Unthanks in four years opens on a bold note, one is tempted to say a Blue Note as the title song is introduced with a melancholic trumpet reminiscent of Miles Davis circa Sketches Of Spain (although Miles had left Blue Note by then for CBS). It’s a surprising sound for a folk album but The Unthanks have been busy over the past few years collaborating with artists such as Adrian Utley of Portishead and exploring the music of Robert Wyatt and Anthony & The Johnsons and Mount The Air is an ambitious marriage of folk, jazz and even trip hop. Rachel and Becky Unthank continue to mine familiar folk tropes, lost loves, wayfaring strangers and magical animals but the arrangements by Rachel’s husband Adrian McNally launch the band into unfamiliar waters at times. It’s tempting to think that the album is an attempt to capture some of the sense of adventure and shock achieved by the Fairports way back when they unleashed their folk rock magnum opus, A Sailor’s Life. Had The Unthanks continued in the same vein as the opening song then there might have been a chance of this but overall the album fails to live up to the adventurous opening.

The song, Mount The Air is a pinnacle. This age old song from the Cecil Sharp collection is stretched to almost ten minutes with Becky Unthank, a changeling looking for a lost love, only occasionally heard amid the Iberian strains of trumpeter Tom Arthur and fiddle from Niopha Keegan. With driving percussion and sweeping strings it’s cinematic in its delivery and somewhat breathtaking. Foundling is another lengthy song that tells the tale of an 18th Century Foundling Hospital but it cleaves to a more traditional style, piano led with Rachel Unthank’s lyrics and vocals the highlight here. Flutter is more adventurous with debts perhaps to Utley’s work with Portishead, electric keyboards and skittering percussion buoying up the otherworldly vocals.

Overall it’s somewhat churlish to concentrate on the more experimental aspects of this album. At their best The Unthanks are a somewhat unique crew, true to their North East roots (the album was recorded in their Northumberland studio), they’re perhaps the best current embodiment of folk music with one foot in tradition and the other in the modern world. Their rendition of Magpie here is haunting with just voices and harmonium transporting the listener into a mystical Albion while Hawthorn is simply delivered and breathtakingly beautiful.

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