The Unthank sisters continue their mission to dust the earth off the folk music of the British heartland and remix it with whatever they happen to listen to at the time. As usual, it’s brilliant.
Rachel’s crystal clear voice and Becky’s darker earthier tones are steeped in several century’s worth of melody, and they trade lines and harmonise like they’re 19th century toilers taking a break down the mines. Where they always break new ground is in the arrangements – their antecedents would have struggled to get the piano and brass band down the mine shaft. On this record, they split the difference between the lush, rich sounds of their last album, Here Is The Tender Coming, and the sparser more wintery territory of their previous one, The Bairns. Here they sing of coal-mining fatalities, the sexual harassment of servants, loneliness and mourning, accompanied, for the most part, by stately, architecturally-sound piano lines, mournful brass chords, sad solo trumpets, counterpunctal cello lines and the very accomplished fiddle-playing of Niopha Keegan.
These arrangements regularly build to the kind of crescendoing instrumental pyrotechnics lesser bands roll out when they want to wow the listener, but it’s different here. You see, with The Unthanks, the instrumental big guns are the voices, which always sound ridiculously impressive no matter what brass-flourishes or string arrangements accompany them and no matter what songs they sing (Tom Waits and King Crimson are covered alongside traditional ballads and self-penned numbers). Yes, Becky and Rachel Unthank can out-sing a brass section and can out-stylise Tom Waits. Singing singly or apart, nothing can eclipse them.