You are hereLive Review: The Unthanks at the Duchess, York
Live Review: The Unthanks at the Duchess, York
Fresh from their appearance on Jools Holland's Later Live, the ten-piece version of The Unthanks utilised every bit of the stage when they appeared at the Duchess tonight, in order to showcase their new album HERE'S THE TENDER COMING. Once on stage, following a short set by regular support duo Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell, you sensed that the band had not yet come down from the dizzying heights of appearing on Later the night before with such world class acts as Diana Krall and Stereophonics, along with Elvis Costello, author Nick Hornby and Jools himself. I had some routine enquiries of my own to ask the key members of the band during the course of the night but was more interested first of all to see how some of the new songs translate into live performance.
Starting with Ewan MacColl's Nobody Knew She Was There, The Unthanks performed just about every song from the new album with just a couple from their previous releases, Twenty Long Weeks from debut CRUEL SISTER and Felton Lonnin and Blackbird from their celebrated Mercury nominated album THE BAIRNS. Even those songs were given a fresh makeover, especially Belinda O'Hooley's Blackbird, which appears to have been through the Penguin Café Orchestra's mangle, coming out the other side every bit as enchanting as Music for a Found Harmonium or indeed Telephone and Rubber Band.
When I first heard Because He Was a Bonny Lad on a pre-release promo, with all its Brian Wilson-like vocal precision, I was worried just how this would transfer to live performance, or whether it would make an appearance in their forthcoming shows at all. Like water off a duck's back, the band performed the song as if they'd been doing it live for years. The introduction of various tuned percussion and the autoharp together with a fine string and horn section not only provides the band's five-piece core with a new sonic dimension, but also brings a new atmospheric dynamic to the band's unique sound.
The most notable change in the band was the addition of producer/manager Adrian McNally on stage, who has made the decision to fill the shoes of Stef Connor, who in turn did the same for Belinda O'Hooley almost a couple of years ago. "It was almost needs must really"
Adrian McNally's decision to join the band on stage as main keyboard player came after many considerations, one of which must have been how to follow in the footsteps of two highly proficient pianists. "I've always felt that the great thing about what Rachel and Becky do, is the honesty in which they sing and perform and it's all about the storytelling. Musically I've always tried to reflect that in terms of ego-less performance and that the story and the song takes precedence over any one of us as performers and in some strange way my limitations as a musician almost aids and abets that in terms of always playing second fiddle to the song and to the singers and if my instrument and arrangements aren't noticed at all, that's the way I want it."
Adrian has also made a songwriting contribution, providing the band with one of his own songs Lucky Gilchrist, which the band confess is now one of their favourites in the live set, a reason maybe that it was also recorded the night before for the Jools Holland programme, which goes out this coming Friday. "I wrote the song for Rachel" Adrian said, "I wrote it about her friend Gary Gilchrist whose nickname was Lucky Gilchrist who died last year very suddenly, he was around my age actually. The piece of music I put it to had been kicking around for a little while and it came together extremely quickly really." Rachel said that she had written down some of her memories of her friend for
The musicianship demonstrated tonight at the Duchess was indeed second to none, especially in the string and brass arrangements on such songs as The Testimony of Patience Kershaw and the beautiful Anne Briggs song Living By The Water, featuring Lizzy Jones' delicious flugelhorn solo, reminiscent of some of Robert Wyatt's most sublime work. Niopha Keegan is under no illusion how we come to have such great musicianship on the folk scene these days; in her particular case, through the efforts of the Newcastle folk degree course that she, amongst many others, have undertaken. "If anybody studies music and has constant classes every week on a practical basis and learning about music theory every day for four years you're going to improve dramatically. We're given opportunities to play with some of the best players on the folk and traditional music so we're very lucky."
The newest member of the crew is
For the two constants in the band, the siblings who embarked on their maiden voyage as a duo, before sailing on three very distinct versions of the Winterset, and now with the five-piece renamed vessel, nothing about them has changed one bit. "We still sing in the same way as we've always done and we still look for songs in the same way" admitted Rachel, "but of course it's changed dramatically from singing just with Becky to having a ten-piece band and even this tour at the beginning, we were looking around for Stef (Connor) wondering 'where is she?' Rachel's younger sister Becky goes on to say "It's like the world around us has changed but we haven't." The Unthank sisters have no real need to change and when all's said and done, why should they? They are essentially folk singers in the most basic use of the term. They sing songs from their neck of the woods and in their own very distinct vernacular. "For us it's perfectly natural, we grew up on the folk scene and that's what people do, they sing in their own accents, so coming from where we do there's no alternative, it doesn't seem strange to us and though people point it out, it makes perfect sense to us."
The sound of the band has become much more focused on attention to detail, where every stroke of a marimba (or 'dinger' as Rachel likes to refer to it as) or every flurry of the autoharp is essential to the sound of the performance. The string section that Niopha Keegan has made herself very at home within, gives the band the solid base on which to build, especially on The Testimony of Patience Kershaw. Jo Silveston's cello on Lal Waterson's At First She Starts provides the most perfect setting for Becky Unthank's unmistakable and inimitable voice.
Aesthetics have been almost as important as the musical presentation itself throughout the short history of the Unthanks musical career. Unashamedly girly, the sisters have paid a lot of attention to their stage presentation and have always taken care to make sure their clothes have measured up to their music.
With an encore of Betsy Belle, the hidden music hall song on the new album, with its energetic clogging sequence, to which Rachel jumped off stage to perform, the band closed on the title song, the beautifully evocative Here's the Tender Coming, quite possibly now the bands' defining song, since it was chosen to be performed live before millions on Jools Holland's live programme precisely twenty-four hours before this performance.
Allan Wilkinson
Northern Sky
Buy from Amazon:
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Rachel Unthank Here's the Tender Coming EMI Catalogue 2009-09-14 £6.99 |
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