The Unthanks
Forging links between folk worlds old, new and other, The Unthanks have blown a bracing north-easterly gale through traditional English song, casting it in an endlessly inventive and playful new mould. This is music as tough as it is gentle, as ancient as it is modern, and as coldly desolate as it is achingly intimate.
Subverting folk music with love and authority, The Unthanks are perhaps unprecedented in their ability to communicate traditional music to unforgiving mainstream audiences and have been describes as having “a sensationally graceful sound that can be epic and subdued, dreamy and specific, as well as supernaturally ancient and defiantly modern.. “.
Transcendent and grounded music folds around unsentimental old, new and imaginatively borrowed stories of booze, brawls, abuse, loss, fear, infantile death, depravity and sorrow. Discreetly provocative arrangements draw on elements of blues, jazz, music hall, burlesque cabaret, classical and leftfield contemporary music, making their take on folk music peerless, fearless and wholeheartedly brave.
“Every now and again, and I mean, every now and again, once in a blue moon type of every now and again, you hear music that is so complete, so wonderful, unique and yet familiar that it stops you in your tracks. They have that blue moon magic about them, and they have it in spades,” says the BBC Website ‘Live Review’.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bRR6DVWEUM[/youtube]
