The Unthanks unleash a concept album to challenge the concepts of even the hardiest grinch, all performed with their ineffable idiosyncracy.

Release Date: 29th November 2024

Label: RabbleRouser Music

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

winter is coming

If this is the first time The Unthanks have delivered a project geared around winter, there still comes, unbidden, the sense that all their releases fall somewhat into that category, such is the sense of frosty splendour their music conveys, the beauty of a late November dawn, the ice glistening upon all the bare trees and branches. No? Maybe it is just me, then, but they always impart a feeling of being toastily wrapped in multiple layers of wool, outside, enjoying chestnuts and mulled ale, whilst they sing, on a village green. Given the last time I saw them was a roasting midday set at Glastonbury, that takes some doing.

crammed with seasonal goodies

This is a double album, and is crammed with seasonal goodies, both relating to any particular religious festival or merely secular songs that equally apply to the time of year. So more than just a Christmas album, but, yes, broadly that. All 19 songs were recorded over the course of a single week on the North Yorkshire Moors, and brings together their core ensemble with a number of additional accompanists. It is also, which seems astonishing, their 16th record.

It becomes fairly swiftly apparent that this is no random collection of related songs, but a set piece, constructed to be heard as a continuum. Indeed, each track; I hesitate to call them songs, blends into the next, with distinct themes followed through to conclusion, ahead another starting up, and there is as much emphasis on the instrumental passages as to when the sisters sing. Which may be less than you might think or expect, but don’t worry.

It opens with what could be called drawing room piano for a Benjamin Britten inspired solo piano tune from McNally, solo, that is, bar the background howling of a wintry gale, heard through the window, and, as it ends, through a door, opening and then closing. It makes for a stately start, duly setting the scene, as footsteps enter and repeated chiming piano chords strike up a seemingly familiar tune. With rippling bass and snare, it first smacks of the Beach Boys and Little Saint Nick, but it all too soon becomes O Tannenbaum.

Sung chorally, and in English, it feels festive and oddly alien at the same time. Becky and Rachel provide the voices, but there is a gentle background chorus as well. Maybe I have seen too many Labour Party conference finales on the telly, but I find it always hard to not think of red flags flying, but the tune is arranged sufficiently subtly to avoid me joining in inappropriately.

dark choral chants and pagan processIons

Dark December, which it bleeds into, is somewhat different, a dark choral chant that smacks of a pagan processional. It provides just the uneasy balance with the track before, and the vocals bring out every bit of the ghostliness within their voices. “Or should we curse the winter“, they intone, over a jangly angular backdrop of electric guitar and vibraphone. All to suddenly some manic clarinet screeches in, an escapee from a klezmer band, possibly, lost in the forest, adding hugely to the sense of something wicked this way comes. A song written by Graeme Miles in 1964, it is wonderful.

It segues then into Gower Wassail, marrying the same backdrop to the tune well known, not without a struggle. Seeming an ill-match at the beginning, it becomes entirely appropriate for the shooting into apple trees, once you shake off the memory of other versions. The vibraphone is here used prominently, played by Will Hammond, with the clarinet of Faye MacCalman now more restrained. The hypnotic drum beat comes, surprisingly, from McNally, a conscious decision he made, to get away from his comfort zone behind the piano. The electric guitar is too worth a mention, it provided by Chris Price, more normally The Unthanks’ bassist.

It takes a moment to pick up on the ensemble tune up next, a pleasing mix of sleigh bells, piano and bowed bass, over which a saxophone gently intones what then becomes The Holly And The Ivy. Jingle Bells replace the sleigh bells, and, with the saxophone sounding a little like bagpipes, it doesn’t over egg things. But, even if the disc needs flipping over, that is still the mood into side 2, as sounds of celebration filter in, a choir, a brass band and conversation, church bells, even. Solo piano takes over, falteringly eking out a skeletal Come All Ye Faithful.

so far so good

So far, so good, but I confess that I personally could have done without the subsequent choral presentation of the first couple of lines, it failing to avoid the mawkishness so successfully sidestepped a moment ahead. My problem, my bad, and the liner notes explain well the difficulties they had around matching the inevitability of the sacred/secular divide, not least as so many songs at this time of year, ingrained in us all, come from the God side. Never more have I wanted to hear, instead, Bob Dylan’s abrasive croak.

Two related carols follow, both traditional, Carol Of The Birds and Carol Of The Beasts, respectively. They slot together beautifully. Becky takes the vocal lead for the first, the Catalan melody and McNally’s arrangement a masterclass in controlled decorum. The bass and saxophone are upfront, as is a string quartet, who add a rich bedding for her voice to soak into. As it moves from fowl to flesh, it becomes more choral, the sisters and Niopha Keegan a unison chant that has a fully french medieval feel, even as saxophone wails in a restless abandon. In fact, it becomes, for a moment, full blown free jazz, before stepping back to Gregorian vocals. Extraordinary.

A beautifully gaunt Cherry Tree Carol, sung a verse each, I think, by Rachel and Becky in turn, to a sensitive piano backing follows, with pins dropping silently all around, demanding your full attention. Both a Christmas carol and a Child ballad, don’cha know!

a deliciously maudlin polish

Chris Wood’s Bleary Winter gets a deliciously maudlin polish, with Dan Rogers taking up the double bass duties, as he does near throughout. Keegan adds some melancholic fiddle textures and it immediately makes the project worth every penny, should that still be anyone’s moot point. That feel is cemented by a piano version of In The Bleak Mid Winter, that somehow manages to escape from just the usual expected notes, adding layers, by subtraction. On a roll, the same sadness then seeps inexorably through into The Snow It Melts The Soonest, with more of that bass, more string quartet and harmonium This is as strong a threesome as the album can provide, even if, technically, Bleary Winter closes side 2, before the side 3 double whammy. I am uncertain which Unthank sings, but it is perfect.

As that fades, so some festive found sounds bleed back in, as a village collectively goes to their Christmas service, a church bell tolling and a choir singing a more orthodox iteration of In The Bleak Mid Winter. I know, it’s atmosphere, but Scrooge McGrinch is dreading what he sees up next. But that shudder is wasted, for the vibraphone solo of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen is so utterly gorgeous and beguiling, and there couldn’t be an apter introduction to what follows. This is a haunting Coventry Carol, with the entire band in muted chorale, backed just by a string drone. It is swoonsomely elegant, with absolutely no tolerance for humbuggery sniping; it is far to good for that. The arrangement is by Keegan, proving yet again her essential role in the band.

sombre feel maintained

A song written by Becky and her partner, and sung by Becky, River, River, manages to maintain the sombre feel. As it unfolds, so the lyric gets sung in rounds, the whole increasingly hypnotic, with MacCalman, now on saxophone, gently blowing a breeze over the voices. Lest this is all sounding a tad serious, first I would say , yes, it is, but, secondly, that takes absolutely none of the associated listening pleasure away from it. A male voice, McNally, takes the lead for one of his own songs, Nurse Emmanuel, if largely derived from a poem by Vanessa Lampert. Out of context, especially as the strings and secondary vocals join him, it could be all a bit sentimental, but, as part the whole, any uncomfortableness is entirely expunged. Either that or I’m infected, enjoying that novelty hugely.

Tar Barrel In Dale, an unaccompanied song written by Unthank paterfamilias, George, commemorates the Allendale tradition of bonfires and blazing tar barrels at New Year, preceded by mummers and guising. It is a lovely song and well sung, the expanded band all part of the swell, but maybe is a little too sweet for my ear. (Maybe I’m cured?!?) Sticking with local tradition, Greatham takes inspiration derives from the mummer’s play, held every boxing day, in the village of that name, which starts with a graceful instrumental lilt, ahead of the female voices chiming in. Diehard Unthank listeners will likely recognise the melody as being broadly the same as Greatham Calling On Song, from their first album, if here presented in a more abstract fashion.

a wonderful close

In an album that continues the Unthank magpie tradition, of mixing songs old and new, found and written specially, I think it good programming that the set finishes with a further song from Becky, again written in tandem with her partner, Ainslie Henderson. Dear Companions is a deeply reflective piece, set to an old American setting of an even older carol, Come Through Fount Of Every Blessing. The tune is relatively simple, but all the more moving for that economy, and, as a choir breaks in, to bolster up the final verse, even my cynical old geese are bumping, as dust fills the air of my reviewing cell. Or that’s my story. A wonderful close to a (mostly) wonderful album, and wherever that standard may seem to slip, it is all still part the necessary narrative.

Find yourself an hour and a bit, and play it, alone and to yourself, no skipping. Whether then you elect to play it again, over the holidays, to friends and family, or even just for your personal sense of the season, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me. You wouldn’t be alone.

The band have just begun a 23 date tour of the UK and Ireland, to present the set as a whole. See those dates above, with, as a taster, River, River, the first of the two Becky Unthank songs featured:

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