The Unthanks
Album: Mount The Air
Label: Rabble Rouser
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.the-unthanks.com

It's four years since The Unthanks graced the racks with a new studio album (the magnificent Last); since that time, they've been extraordinarily busy, collaborating with an extensive, and diverse, list of musicians, from Adrian Utley and Martin Green to Martin Hayes and the Voice Squad, from Sting to German "sound artist" Werner Cee, while also producing Diversions (a series of three illuminating themed exploratory CDs), and a number of film and orchestral scores. Importantly though, in parallel with all that activity over the past two years they've also nurtured and developed a family of ideas for Mount The Air - the final finished product of which bears all the hallmarks of careful preparation, and lovingly and intensely configured composition and execution with absolute - and fearless - devotion to the cause. It's been a long road travelled for sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, from their proud Northumbrian roots and through the fortuitous conjoining (in all senses of the word) with multi-skilled musical adventurer Adrian McNally (now Rachel's husband), to the production of consistently innovative, knowingly uncompromising music that, while clearly based on folk tradition, also reflects and absorbs, with characteristic consummate intelligence, altogether wider musical and cultural contexts both historical and contemporary. To the folk-traditionalist, even the traditionalist who's more familiar with (and probably more comfortable with) the earlier musical projects of Rachel Unthank (up to and including The Winterset), the aura and musical climate of Mount The Air may (and quite correctly so) be termed experimental; but this brand of experimental is not intimidating but instead perfectly accessible - albeit not necessarily easy listening. The resultant music stands out from the folk-crowd, not least in its being piano-centred (against the genre convention that encourages the domination of the guitar). It's also literally unique, and like any unique artistic creation inevitably, and fairly, demands the listener's closest, and undivided, attention.

The Unthanks' latest offering Mount The Air thus unfolds its compelling tapestry at a natural, unhurried pace; in the case of the opening, title track (an original McNally composition) that means a span of over ten minutes, yet with not a second, or note, wasted. It's sparely and precisely scored yet in its own way quite sumptuous, maybe something between a Lark Rise soundtrack score and a limpid Miles Davis invention (I'd be tempted to dub this intro Sketches Of Northumberland), with an achingly evocative solo trumpet line (courtesy of guest musician Tom Arthurs) weaving in and out of the musical argument and texture. Out of this special landscape arises Becky's curiously seductive vocal, like its mirroring backdrop bleak yet warm, tonally comforting yet quite unsettling while relating and laying bare the internal drama of the traditionally-based tale to its core, a microcosm of the protagonist's precarious emotional state and its complex of contradictions, disturbed and yet resigned. This builds to a veritable mantra of resolve and determination in an impressive, almost euphoric musical climax of strings, brass and percussion (a brave texture that's brilliantly defined in the swooning clarity of the expert recording) before this dissipates as the trumpet gets to have the last (-post) word. And that's only the opening track…

On Madam, Rachel delivers a cautious, considered take on a bawdy folk lyric to a moody, restless string backing. Becky's breathy artistry then comes into its own on Died For Love, ostensibly a sequel to Madam, cradled with ominous luxuriousness by strings, piano and brushed snare. She then glides across the dreamy, glacial trip-hop of Flutter, whose repetitive text is arguably more of an atmosphere than a lyric. Magpie (from the pen of David Dodds) is a standout track, wherein the deep-rooted folklore informs the primordial pulse of the powerful vocal arrangement. Foundling, the disc's centrepiece, is another epic creation of McNally's; it opens with a sweeping cinematic string melody, and renders its heart-rending historical narrative through the lens of an unashamedly lavish orchestral soundscape. Interestingly, hearing Foundling directly inspired Rachel to write the intimate, chiming, lilting Last Lullaby, so it's very fitting that it should be placed at this point in the CD's running order, Hawthorn is almost a counterpart to Magpie in its exploration of folklore, a kind of emotional counterweight, an ostensibly simple sing-song lyric set to an intensely beautiful melody and touchingly performed by Becky. On the track that follows, For Dad, the spotlight falls on the band's fiddle player Niopha Keegan, where an archive recording of her father's encouragement introduces and frames a delicate yet expansive air of her own composition. The Poor Stranger forms a kind of bookend-counterpart to earlier song Madam, its minimalist, almost Satie-esque parlour-mode delivery contrasting with the more luxuriously scored material on previous tracks. All that remains is the disc's instrumental postlude, Waiting, which beguilingly continues the limpid, slightly enigmatic drifting, shifting mood with a feeling of inevitability that the proceedings almost seem to have been leading up to all the while; after a few bars' sudden hiatus midway through, a marginally more fully scored repeat section comes to rest on a twinkling celeste arpeggio. And then it's all over. By which point, if you've been listening constantly for the past hour, you'll have "got it". And, I'm sure, you'll have mounted the air, uplifted by the possibilities of The Unthanks' musical explorations and been immeasurably enriched by the whole experience.

David Kidman