Thanks Unthanks

After a gruelling day's teaching, I toddled off to see The Unthanks last night, supported by Johnny Kearney and Lucy Farrell (who we missed because I was teaching so late). Props to the people who stole our reserved seats at the front, by the way. You just can't trust the old. They'll nick anything.

Turnout was low because the inhabitants of A Dark Place are brutish ingrates (all the other venues sold out), but it appeared to bother the band not a jot. There were ten of them on stage, all multi-instrumentalists. Singers nipped round to take over on drums, the pianist played lap steel, the cellist had a glockenspiel and banjo, a violinist also played trumpet and the viola player sometimes switched to trombone. The singers (the Rachel and Rebecca Unthank) even did some clog dancing.

My 17-year old self would have committed hara-kiri if he'd suspected that he'd one day end up watching clog dancing. That kid was a dick. The clog-dancing was utterly cool - especially as the band were all togged out in stylish cocktail dresses and the like. Except for the three men.

The Unthanks were so good that my vocabulary feels utterly inadequate to express the range of styles and emotions they covered. They'd segue from a bleak ballad to a heartbreaking shanty to a raunchy Tindersticksy/jazzy number, some of them covers of tracks I'll now have to track down, all interspersed with hilarious banter. I particularly liked 'Here's a song about wanting to kiss a boy. Don't worry though, we've made it sad to match all our other songs because we don't want to shock anyone'.

It was a great show, and the band chatted away happily to fanboys (thanks for the teasing, Emma) afterwards without any showiness - I guess that comes from the folk scene. So I came home with a signed poster and CDs.

Here are a couple of tracks: Frank Higgins' 'The Testimony of Patience Kershaw', based on teenage girl's life as a miner in the 1830s (how folk can you get), notable for the girl's words and the beautiful string arrangement (I love viola solos).

In the bleak midwinter

… you obviously need to listen to modern British folk of the bleakest kind, such as The Unthanks, whom I'm seeing tonight, with Emma. Virtually every other gig they're doing is sold out, but A Dark Place doesn't have a very discerning public, so they've only sold 150 tickets: get down to the Wulfrun.

Actually, that's a little unfair. The wind howls round their new album less unforgivingly than the last. Here's proof:

The Unthanks - thanks very much

Lots of visitors are arriving here after searching for The Unthanks new album, Here's The Tender Coming, so I thought I'd share my opinions with you.

I heard of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, as they were formerly known, via a cheap CD of up and coming folk acts a couple of years ago. I listened to their first album, Cruel Sister, and marvelled at the sound, the songwriting, the lyrical insight gained from singing about everyday life, then I put it away, because the bleakness of it all was too much even for a hard-bitten rodent such as myself.

However, snatches of lyrics kept coming to me as I performed the tasks featured in the songs - work, commuting, lonely evenings, and I gave in, only to discover that there's a warmth in the songs' appreciation of our shared experiences which I hadn't previously noted.

So that was their early music. Here's the Tender Coming is one for those of you with a sunnier disposition. Obviously this is relative: they're still a Northern folk troupe, but the mood is more melancholic than downright harsh than the second album, The Bairns, and the instrumentation is much more lush.

So yes, double thumbs up for the Unthanks. Give them something to smile about…