You can never have enough QU in your blood. Last year, when they were still the Winterset, this lot played the Venn festival. I took some terrible photos. It was a beautiful moment of quiet in a day of running towards weirdo noise. They may or may not still have the very hairy drummer but, you know, you should still go.
The Unthanks
with Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell
Joyfully traditional but wholly original, the plucky songbirds from N/W England are back with an abbreviated new name, The Unthanks, but a much larger group to back their playful and beautifully delivered songs. The tour will also be promoting their much anticipated new album. Forging links between folk worlds old, new and other, The Unthanks are the inheritors, curators and distorters of Tyneside’s traditions. Don’t miss the next chapter.
Known for their timeless, unsentimental and quietly subversive tales of loss, fear, booze, brawls, abuse and sorrow, new album Here’s The Tender Coming, as the name suggests, is a calmer, melancholic, warmer colour of sad than the intense bleak drama of its predecessor; The Bairns (which was nominated for the Uncut Music Prize and Mercury Music Prize as one of the top ten British albums of the year).
On tour with exciting newcomers Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell .
The Unthanks blow a refreshing north-easterly gale through traditional English song, casting it in an endlessly inventive and playful new mould. They also have a reputation for being a truly entertaining and breathtaking live act. With a strong emphasis on self-penned songs, the girls swap lead vocal responsibilities, joyfully remodel traditional material and delight in covering songs from unlikely sources such as Anthony & The Johnsons. Their stories of small town drama, epic tragedies, old traditions and new love are theatrical in their scope and that is why we have chosen such a beautiful venue for them to play.
The autumn of 2009 represents an exciting and adventurous time for the ambitious but very grounded Geordie band formerly known as Rachel Unthank & The Winterset. Having established themselves as the most innovative and critically acclaimed English folk band in modern history, with admirers as disparate as members of Radiohead, Portishead, Robert Wyatt, Ben Folds, Nic Jones and Nick Hornby, The Unthanks are ready to risk it all with another audacious step sideways. While the abbreviated name reflects the long-established reality that the band is co-fronted by Rachel Unthank’s sister Becky Unthank, the real development sees an extended line-up that includes string quartet, brass, percussion, tuned percussion, bass, and The Unthank’s producer Adrian McNally taking on piano responsibilities from Stef Conner who returns to a PhD. Winterset key member Niopha Keegan continues on violin.
‘Intimate, epic, overflowing with feeling and musical intelligence’ The Independent
“Music as tough as it is gentle, as ancient as it is modern, and as coldly desolate as it is achingly intimate.. a sensationally graceful sound that can be epic and subdued, dreamy and specific, as well as supernaturally ancient and defiantly modern”.
Paul Morley, Observer Music Magazine
Tickets only available from The Old Vic: www.bristololdvic.org.uk / 0117 9877877
