“We’ve learnt a brand new tune to drive sorrows away”, declare The Unthanks on the epic title observe of their newest album. It’s a easy sufficient sentiment, but one loaded with profound which means. For a band who draw power and inspiration from the act of communal togetherness, the previous couple of years have been particularly robust. Not solely did the enforced lockdown forestall them from enjoying stay, nevertheless it put a stopper within the residential workshops and weekends which were such an important a part of The Unthanks’ MO for a decade or so.
Sorrows Away typically seems like a liberation. Again on the highway for the reason that spring, The Unthanks have already been previewing the album stay, as an prolonged 11-piece band, their set hitting peak catharsis with the aforementioned “Sorrows Away (Love Is Type)”, inviting everybody into its gently arcing refrain. For these of us who’ve been fortunate sufficient to be there, it’s a deceptively transferring second. The tune additionally comprises most all the pieces that makes The Unthanks what they’re: impossibly luminous harmonies, a fantastic association, sinuous ensemble work and a symphonic sense of scale.
Sorrows Away marks a renewed shift. The Unthanks’ quite a few studio tasks of late – from the songs and poems of Molly Drake and 2019’s conceptual Strains to the Worzel Gummidge TV soundtrack and an a cappella stay assortment because the fifth instalment of their Diversions collection – imply that Sorrows Away is their first non-specific album since 2015’s award-winning Mount The Air.
It’s a belated successor that simply stands comparability. Recorded at residence in Northumberland, Sorrows Away declares itself with two long-form treasures. “The Nice Silkie Of Sule Skerry” emerges from a gentle drone and Adrian McNally’s pretty piano determine, as Becky and Rachel Unthank are regularly joined by moody brass, strings, acoustic guitar and the bassy rumble of drummer Martin Douglas. A conventional Orkney tune discovered from Alan Fitzsimmons of The Keelers, the Tyneside folks group whose ranks included George Unthank, the sisters’ father, it subtly adjustments kind just like the shape-shifter of the title, making for an completely gripping eight minutes.
It will definitely makes means for “The Sandgate Dandling Music”. Having been an obsession of McNally’s for a while now, ever since listening to ex-wife Rachel sing it once they first met, it tells the conflicted story of the spouse of a violent North East keelman and the repercussions of home abuse on their son. Borrowing a tune from Japanese Europe, discovered from a Polish accordion participant, McNally steps as much as the mic and inserts the tune with a recent verse, informed from the daddy’s disturbed viewpoint. It’s a masterpiece of nuanced drama, burnished with mournful strings and lonely brass. Each opening songs already really feel like important occasions within the Unthanks canon, taking their place alongside the likes of “Mount The Air” or “Right here’s The Tender Coming”.
If “The Sandgate Dandling Music” is thematically downbeat, “The Previous Information” gives some uplift. Written by McNally and Becky Unthank (and certainly one of two non-traditional songs on Sorrows Away), it buds outwards like a spring flower, its promise carried on the breeze of a vibrant association that’s half folks, half pop. “Did they inform you that respiratory is part of the therapeutic/Mates and lovers amongst all others/You belong to the air”, she sings, alluding to the liberty and restorative results of getting back from an enforced interval of inactivity.
The identical feeling is echoed in “The Bay Of Fundy”. Initially written and recorded by US folklorist Gordon Bok, The Unthanks unmoor the tune from the unforgiving tides of the Gulf of Maine and imbue it with a common feeling of longing and pure surprise. It’s upbeat in tone, the siblings’ voices twinned in good concord, intermittently shadowed by that of guitarist Chris Value, till the entire thing lastly dissolves right into a semi-orchestral coda.
Given The Unthanks’ rediscovered sense of flight, it might be no coincidence that Sorrows Away contains two avian-centric songs. The dashing “The Royal Blackbird” dates from Jacobite occasions and serves as a veiled salute to Bonnie Prince Charlie, given wings by frisky guitar, percussive allegro strings and Lizzie Jones’ trumpet.
The Irish “My Singing Chook” is simply as spectacular. Led by singer and fiddler Niopha Keegan, it’s a stunning showcase for The Unthanks’ three-part harmonies. This, in any case, is on the root of the band’s extraordinary reward for reinterpretation, holding true to the tune’s assertion that “there’s none of them can sing so candy”. It’s fantastic to have them again, and on such imperious kind.
