The Unthanks – Mount The Air 9th February 2015

The Unthanks – Mount The Air 9^th February 2015 – RabbleRouser Music

www.the-unthanks.com

The Unthanks invite you to Mount the Air. An invitation to be free, weightless, airborne, to transcend reality, to enter your imagination, to raise the possibilities above the ordinary, to become one with nature, to give yourself up to nature and let the wind carry you to new places. To fly.

Or, perhaps you prefer a more objective, bullet-point summary:

 

–    Mount The Air is the first studio album by The Unthanks since Last was released four years ago.

–    Mount The Air has been two years in the making and the first to be made in their own makeshift studio in Northumberland, set up in an old granary building, 200 yards from where Rachel Unthank and Adrian McNally live with their 2 sons, 1 and 3 years old.

–    Mount The Air is released on their own label, RabbleRouser, despite offers of continuation with major labels.

–    It is the first Unthanks record to feature writing from all 5 core members, including debut contributions from both Rachel and Becky Unthank, as well as continued and more extensive writing from pianist and producer Adrian McNally, including the opening 10 minute title track.

–    Musically more ambitious than ever, the Mercury nominated Geordies are still a combination of grounded tradition and filmic orchestration, but with Mount The Air, they take on flavours from traditions as diverse as Spain, India, Blue Note and er, Trip Hop.

–    While Mount The Air has all the hallmarks of a band working in heightened isolation, since releasing Last in 2011, The Unthanks have collaborated with Orbital, Adrian Utley (Portishead), Martin Green (Lau), Martin Hayes, The Voice Squad, Sting, Charles Hazlewood, The Moulettes and German composer Werner Cee, while also producing a film soundtrack,a orchestral scale commission for a brass band collaboration with the National Champions of Great Britain, a WW1 project with Sam Lee, explorations of the work of both Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, and a children’s song commission. And Rachel Unthank and Adrian McNally had two children and Becky Unthank got married.

 

When The Unthanks released Last in 2011, Uncut wrote that “The Unthanks seem to regard folk music the same way Miles Davis regarded jazz: as a launch pad for exploring the wider possibilities”. The Unthanks have taken that analogy a step further on Mount The Air, with a beautiful 10 minute opening title track that has echoes of Miles Davis and Gill Evans in their Sketches of Spain period. Written by Rachel Unthank’s husband and pianist/producer/arranger Adrian McNally (based on the themes of a one-verse traditional ditty from a book of Dorset songs in Cecil Sharp House by Becky Unthank), the piece features the trumpet playing of the world-class Tom Arthurs; a former BBC New Generation Artist and Elysian Quartet collaborator, now immersed in the Berlin improv scene.

 

With a classic transformation folk tale at it’s heart, Mount The Air introduces the album with one seductive layer of texture after another, giving way eventually to driving Blue Note stylings and finally a climax reminiscent of Arcade Fire’s euphoria or Elbow’s anthemic power, but here the power is spectacular, not created conventionally with guitars, but with breathtaking musical colour and beauty.

 

The title track gives way to the glacial atmosphere of Madam, more reminiscent of Last, or even Felton Lonin from their Mercury nominated album The Bairns. Rachel Unthank’s austere vernacular and McNally’s magnific atmospheres conjure vast Northumberland’s moods with chilly precision.

 

Died For Love opens with strings that recall the dramatic scale juxtaposition of Sandy Denny’s Next Time Around, while Flutter could be a David Arnold Bond theme, and perhaps a bit of surprise to any remaining preconceptions that The Unthanks are merely clog-dancing folkies  Her first appearance as a writer, Becky Unthank wrote the words and vocal tune to Flutter, with Adrian McNally providing the setting, while Becky also wrote some of the original words to Mount The Air alongside McNally.

 

Then, it couldn’t get any folkier, with Magpie, a tour de force of unaccompanied singing, showing off the trio sound of Rachel, Becky and Niopha Keegan that has become a band-within-a-band and will surely surface as a project in itself at some point.

 

Next is Foundling, based on the extraordinary 18th century story of Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital in London. When the Foundling Museum approached McNally with a commission a couple of years ago, the timing made it impossible, but McNally returned to the idea when writing for the album. Adrian then played his song to wife, Rachel Unthank, who was inspired herself to commit pen to paper for the first time, writing new verses for Golden Slumbers, which eventually became Last Lullaby. The two pieces sit side by side, like a mini folk opera in the middle of the record.

 

Mount The Air also sees writing debuts (in The Unthanks at least ) for fiddle player Niopha Keegan and guitar/bassist Chris Price, with Keegan contributing the beautiful air For Dad (in honour of her Irish father, Patrick Keegan, who died a couple of years ago – his voice appears at the start of the track) and Price closing the album with Waiting – eccentrically arranged by McNally and including the battered chord organ given to him by Adrian Utley (Portishead). Waiting also employs the tabla skills of drummer Martin Douglas, who earned his stripes by training in India.

 

Douglas makes other notable percussion contributions on the title track and Mount The Air, having become a permanent fixture in The Unthanks line-up, borrowed from and shared with North East anarchic Balkan dance band The Baghdaddies. Long-serving Unthank stalwarts Lizzie Jones (trumpet) and Becca Spencer (viola) also feature in an extensive list of contributors that will on tour and through next festival season be a 10 strong ensemble.

 

This detailed account of the album omits to mention perhaps the most beautiful piece on the record. Hawthorn, with it’s unique words and stunning performance, might break your heart. Mount The Air is the work of an act who still believe whole heartedly in the value of the album as an artform.

 

On very limited resources and makeshift facilities, they have shown extraordinary commitment and devotion to that art-form, to create their finest work yet.

 

For an album so long in the making, there will considerable anticipation for Mount The Air, not least from the many fellow performers who count themselves as fans of The Unthanks, including Martin Freeman, Elvis Costello, Colin Firth, Robert Wyatt, Ben Folds, Ryan Adams, Rosanne Cash, Dawn French, Ade Edmondson, Al Murray, Matt Lucas, Stephen Mangan, Boy George, Paul Morley, Ewan McGregor and Nick Hornby.

 

Most recently added to that list is Martin Freeman, who said “All I can say about The Unthanks is that they make my heart beat faster, or smile a lot, or cry. They mean it. And not in some dreary ‘authentic’ way that feels like a penance for the listener, but just natural. They sing and play what the hell they like, and if you’ve heard nicer harmonies this year, I may call you a liar. I’m glad to be around at the same time as them.”