The Unthanks – Here’s the Tender Coming

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    go1
    Gang of One

    Registriert seit: 03.11.2004

    Beiträge: 5,625

    Der Nachfolger des großartigen Albums The Bairns von Rachel Unthank & The Winterset erscheint im UK am 14. September. Becky Unthank ist jetzt offiziell Co-Leaderin neben ihrer Schwester Rachel, daher der neue Bandname. Außerdem sind zwei neue Bandmitglieder dazu gekommen.

    Infos gibt’s hier

    Rachel Unthank wrote:
    The Bairns was so bleak and sparse that we didn’t feel we could build on its intensity, and besides, we like to keep stimulated and moving creatively. We were never going to do the opposite and make a happy album!.. but Here’s The Tender Coming is hopefully a warmer, calmer shade of sad than The Bairns.

    Tracklist:
    1 Because He Was a Bonny Lad
    2 Sad February
    3 Annachie Gordon
    4 Lucky Gilchrist
    5 The Testimony of Patience Kershaw
    6 Living by the Water
    7 Where’ve Yer Bin Dick
    8 Nobody Knew She Was There
    9 Flowers of the Town
    10 Not Much Luck in Our House
    11 At First She Starts
    12 Here’s the Tender Coming
    13 Betsy Bell

    Vier Sterne im neuen UNCUT.

    Ebenfalls vier Sterne im Guardian (von Colin Irwin).

    Und hier ist noch ein Review von Allan Wilkinson:

    Allan Wilkinson wrote:
    Dropping the piano motif that opens both previous albums, the band’s third offering ‚Here’s the Tender Coming‘ opens with the distinctive voice of an unaccompanied Becky Unthank, breathing life into an old song, „Because He Was a Bonny Lad“, which then morphs seamlessly, with a little help from Rachel and Niopha’s intuitive vocal syncopation, into a celestial chorus of vocal pyrotechnics; like a cross between the Beach Boys and the Flying Pickets, as sung by the resident choir of Durham Cathedral. Despite having a reputation for providing the world with some of the bleakest songs since the folk revival began, this opening song is probably one of the most uplifting sounds in the bands‘ recorded output to date.

    No rest for the wickedly melancholic though as ‚bleak‘ comes back almost on cue with „Sad February“, together with high heel metronome as previously heard on „Felton Lonnin“ and „Sea Song“. It’s more Thomas Hardy than Leonard Cohen though, all set against a Teeside landscape, perfectly melancholic for the lachrymose subject matter, that of drowned sailors and their grieving widows. Bass and drums were previously experimented with on the Winterset’s version of the Beatles song „Sexy Sadie“, especially recorded for Mojo Magazine’s homage to the White Album and now make a return throughout this album, effectively giving the girls‘ feet a break.

    It’s difficult to describe Becky Unthank’s distinctive voice, but it’s certainly unlike anything else you might stumble across in your record collection. During her time with this band, Becky has brought some corkers to the band’s repertoire, each with its own individual personality and character. As a song writer, the name Lal Waterson has become just about as sacrosanct as Sandy Denny’s a couple or three decades earlier and one tends to tread carefully when tackling that particular body of work. The younger Unthank sibling is fearless though, approaching Lal Waterson in exactly the same manner as she approaches Nick Drake or Robert Wyatt. She makes these songs her own and stamps an indelible mark right on the box. With a powerful string arrangement, Becky confidently strides through „At First She Starts“ with her trademark breathy performance, likewise on such a mammoth ballad as „Annachie Gordon“, taking the Nic Jones version rather than Mary Black’s, and weaving through the arrangement like a bird in flight. All this is helped along by some steadily building and pulsating rhythms and like a ticking clock, life abandons our protagonists with a deafening silence.

    The album’s only original song, written by Adrian McNally, provides a completely new departure for the band. Set to a heavy handed piano riff and strings accompaniment, we are introduced to a new folk hero in „Lucky Gilchrist“ a close friend of Rachel’s who she sadly lost last year. With a minimalist approach, Adrian McNally’s piano motif alternates between shades of Sufjan Stevens and John Carpenter horror score atmospherics. No greater eulogy in song could be paid to the dear departed than in the lyric ‚you live on in all of us‘.

    If the opening song tips its hat to Brian Wilson then the arrangement to the Frank Higgins song „The Testimony of Patience Kershaw“ surely owes a debt to Eleanor Rigby. With a delightful string quartet arrangement, the Unthanks deliver probably the most joyous sound on the album, yet ironically to a heartbreaking historic 1842 testimony by an illiterate 17 year-old female miner, whose story was told to a British government commission, formed to examine the conditions of women and children working in the coal mines. Rachel’s reading of this ballad is both emotionally moving and utterly believable.

    Returning to Sheila Stewart after the success of „Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk“, Becky delivers a jaunty sing-a-long coda with „Betsy Bell“, which probably owes more to the Northern music hall tradition than to folk song. Like „Where’ve Yer Bin Dick“, which some of us had the privilege of being taught by Rachel first hand in her singing workshop at the Cambridge Folk Festival this year, the song offers some light relief to augment some of the more gloom-ridden songs on the album. Ultimately, I have to agree with Rachel though, that all in all, ‚Here’s the Tender Coming‘ does seem to be a ‚warmer, calmer shade of sad than The Bairns‘.

    --

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      go1
      Gang of One

      Registriert seit: 03.11.2004

      Beiträge: 5,625

      Die ersten sechs Songs des Albums sind seit kurzem auf der MySpace-Seite der Band zu hören. Nach dem ersten unkonzentrierten Reinhören ist „Sad February“ mein Favorit. Bis ich das Album habe, wird es wohl noch etwas dauern.

      http://www.myspace.com/rachelunthank

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      gypsy-tail-wind
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      Biomasse

      Registriert seit: 25.01.2010

      Beiträge: 66,850

      Ein ganz wunderbares Album!
      Für Fans gibt’s hier ein kleines Extra :sonne:

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      "Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #150: Neuheiten 2023/24 – 12.3., 22:00; #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba
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