The Unthanks - A Retrospective (2011) [HDtracks]

Empathetic stories of love, loss, birth, death, brawls and booze make for a rollercoaster ride through the human condition, as Rachel and Becky’s folk-club unaccompanied singing upbringing is set against otherworldly musical pictures, arranged by a band with influences from Steve Reich to Miles Davies, Martin Hayes to Robert Wyatt, Portishead to Sufjan Stevens, Penguin Cafe Orchestra to Antony & The Johnsons. It’s hard to conceive how music could sound so traditional and adventurous at once. It is a spell that has earned them fans as disperate as members of Radiohead and Portishead, Elvis Costello, Robert Wyatt, Ewan McGregor, Ryan Adams, Colin Firth, Ben Folds, Rosanne Cash, Nick Hornby and Dawn French! They have no bigger fan than in Britain’s leading music journalist Paul Morley who has described them as “two of my favourite singers of all time.. music that is both supernaturally ancient and defiantly modern, as coldly desolate as achingly intimate”.

Siblings Rachel and Becky were born and bred in the North-East, and on the Tyneside and Northumbrian traditions of sea songs, border songs and clog dancing. Influenced less by fantastic female folk singers like June Tabor and Eliza Carthy, The Unthanks grew up around the impassioned, bawdy harmony singing of male North East bands like The Keelers (of which dad George is a member) and The Wilsons. Their style of projection and communication also owes much to their formative years of singing without accompaniment or amplification.

An initial spell as an unaccompanied duo gave way to the birth of Rachel Unthank & The Winterset in 2004, a band name chosen to free sister Becky at a tender 18, from restrictions to choose her own path; a freedom that perhaps led to her committing to the band so fully. Belinda O’Hooley and Jackie Oates were recruited on piano and 5 string viola and debut album 'Cruel Sister' was a success. Phil Jupitus said was one of the first to pick up on it, saying that “one day all music will sound like this”, and Mojo Magazine made it their Folk Album of the Year.