07 March 2015 (gig)
12 March 2015
It’s only the second song into The Unthanks’s set and one wonders how they are going to follow or let alone top it? They open with a friendly welcome from Becky and Rachel, and from Hawthorn they go into Mount the Air the 10 minute title track from the new album. It’s a brave move but the jazzy, Spanish tinged brass snakes out of the speakers, the sisters’ vocals and strings soon capture the audience. The sound in the Roundhouse is rich and immense, the song undulating and shifting in tone and mood keeping its grip to the end.
Thank you and goodnight usually follows a draining epic like that but the band chose Madam to follow as it does on the album and gently bring the audience down. From there the band take us through a good portion of the new album, plus a smattering of older songs.
With the strings and brass now an integral part of The Unthanks sound, they comfortably move between the orchestral, jazz, dabbling with prog and certainly well beyond their folk roots. That said they do still reach back to traditional songs and composers, plus give us a clog dance now and then.
They are well rehearsed though there’s never a feeling of going through the motions, what with all the playful banter going between the members. The main set is rounded off with a respectful version of King Crimson’s Starless. After a sublime a capella Caught in A Storm, they oddly decide to reprise the final section of Mount the Air during the encore, though it does give Rachel and Becky a chance to clog it and get the audience moving too.
Their new album and this performance confirm that the band are now in that happy position where they are very difficult to categorise. They have their folk roots but they are now drawing from so many other streams that to try and pin them down is pointless. So its best, and much more interesting, to go with the flow and see what comes next.
A word or two for Teesside folksters the Young’uns. A Billy Bragg cover, sea shanties and a topical song about Benefit Street plus touching tale about a WW1 loss and some audience participation, all combined to make an entertaining set.
