The Unthanks

All-Star Lineup Celebrates Linda Thompson at City Winery NYC

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The collective effort to bring folk legend Linda Thompson’s ‘Proxy Music’ and this musical night saluting it to life was nothing short of magical.

Sal Cataldi July 10

For singer Teddy Thompson, it was the best of times and maybe the most awkward of times, too. The amiable scion of the turbulently majestic British folk-rock couple, Linda and Richard Thompson, hosted an all-star celebration of the new album by his mother, Proxy Music, at New York’s City Winery on 30 June. Due to an illness called spasmatic dysphonia, Linda can no longer sing. But in a way, this tragedy may have added even greater depth to her still somewhat underrated talents as a writer of harmonically and lyrically mature songs.

On the new album, Linda’s new compositions are voiced by an all-star cast, including Martha Wainwright and Rufus Wainwright, John Grant, Ren Harvieu, the Proclaimers, the Rails, Dori Freeman, the Unthanks, Eliza Carthy, and Kami and Teddy Thompson. The City Winery event included a few of the above and notables like Amy Helm, Jenni Muldaur, Syd Straw, Vicky Peterson, and Tammy Faye Starlite, New York City’s most entertaining cabaret chanteuse. The evening boasted performances of select songs from the new album and some of Linda’s best solo and duet classics with ex-husband Richard Thompson.

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Unthank Smith: Nowhere and Everywhere review | Jude Rogers’s folk album of the month

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Rachel Unthank’s voice wraps softly around Paul Smith’s unfussy baritone on an otherworldly album that explores the songs of their mutual homeland

By Jude Rogers

Rachel Unthank is a folk-singing veteran whose family band, the Unthanks, have always been collaborative, political and quietly experimental, recording LPs of the songs of Anohni, Robert Wyatt and Molly Drake, as well as works of moving social history with Maxine Peake and Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. Paul Smith, the festival crowd-cajoling frontman of Newcastle indie-rockers Maxïmo Park, is outwardly very different, but has long been a folk fan; after the pair met at an Africa Express gig, they set out to explore the songs of their mutual homeland, the north-east of England.

With Field Music’s David Brewis producing to crown a north-eastern triumvirate, Nowhere and Everywhere is a beautiful, exploratory collection bringing old stories to life in settings pastoral and otherworldly. The arrangements are the star of the show, hinting towards the mid-century soundtracks of Basil Kirchin, the spacious ambience of later Talk Talk and the post-rock textures of Tortoise and Gastr del Sol. Clarinettist Faye MacCalman and drummer Alex Neilson provide the soft waves on which Unthank and Smith’s vocals drift, crest and roll.

Smith’s voice slots very naturally into traditional settings, his direct baritone the unfussy, handsome instrument of an intimate storyteller. It is especially gorgeous on the Child ballad, Lord Bateman, Unthank’s voice wrapping around it like soft cotton; real joy also shines through their duet on Lal Waterson’s glorious ode to drunkenness, Red Wine Promises.

Unthank also plays an unsettling, droning harmonium on Graeme Miles’ stunning Horumarye (a song about the sound the wind makes whistling over the moors) and contributes her first-ever original to a record, Seven Tears, about a selkie, a mythological seal that sheds its skin to transform into a human lover. This track builds gently, then feverishly, shivering with love. This whole album carries the same liberating feeling throughout.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/0ywZ29pgknhA75Tdjc83z3?utm_source=generator

Source: Unthank Smith: Nowhere and Everywhere review | Jude Rogers’s folk album of the month

The Unthanks’ “Diversions Vol. 1” turns ten, and still sounds beautiful

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Sing Out! Review | THE UNTHANKS: Diversions Vol. 1 (Rough Trade 5112): by Bill Snyder

By Bill Snyder | Sept 2012

The Unthanks have always played loose with the folk traditions of their native Northumberland, England. Though their intricate chamber-like arrangements transform folk repertoire into something uniquely Unthank, they seem to reveal each song’s essence in the process.

On Diversions Vol. 1, they tackle the work of Antony Hegarty (Antony & The Johnsons) and Soft Machine cofounder Robert Wyatt in much the same way, dramatically reinterpreting each song and drilling down to its heart. There are no attempts to make these “folk songs,” and even the intricate vocal interplay between sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank loses much of its Celtic lilt.

Hegarty’s songs are sparse and filled with longing. The band treats them delicately, focusing on piano, and vocal-centric arrangements fleshed out by strings. It’s all about intimacy. Notably, “Man is the Baby” captures the struggle of the spirit’s need to soar with such intimacy it could have been performed in a living room. The show stopping “Today I Am a Boy” seems like its response as the sisters’ harmony do soar, with beauty and strength that invoke shudders if not tears.

Wyatt’s songs require a bigger sound, and the band steps up. “Dondestan” takes a trumpet melody and punctuates it with Rachel and Becky’s clogs creating the Northumberland equivalent of a hoedown — so energetic you’re hooked before realizing it’s a plea for displaced Palestinians.

“Sea Song” (the album’s highpoint) is cryptic, poetic and elegiac. Stripped largely to piano, accordion and Becky’s vocals, it taps a romantic sorrow, but ends with the entrance of violin and building harmonies: a hint of redemption.

This is truly a diversion from The Unthanks’ canon. Those looking for a folk album should probably pass. For those who have been transfixed by the band’s interpretations, arrangements, and vocal harmonies, though, it’s definitely a welcome diversion.

Source: THE UNTHANKS: Diversions Vol. 1 – Sing Out!