» The Unthanks

The intriguing success of the 2007 Rachel Unthank & the Winterset album The Bairns - which apparently came remarkably close to winning the Mercury prize - has a lot to say about the perceptions and misconceptions surrounding music.

Since their first album, 2005's Cruel Sister, they have unflinchingly explored these roots but oddly, though, they were never fully embraced by the folk world. Not at first. In an era which saw the rise of relatively smooth singers such as Kate Rusby, people complained that Rachel's voice was too harsh and jagged, and that her younger sister Becky's creamy harmonies jarred. Yet, struck by their often poignant, frequently brutal material and the refreshingly uncompromising honesty of their delivery, the mainstream media sat up and took notice and their dark, brooding approach found a growing audience based only partially in the genre that spawned them.

The departure of their larger-than-life pianist and sometime songwriter Belinda O'Hooley - and indeed, now, her successor, Stef Conner - has forced changes; Becky now gets equal billing in the resultant name amendment, with "Mr Rachel Unthank", Adrian McNally - producer, manager and in many ways the single-minded architect of their success - taking over on keyboards. Yet far from heralding a more obviously commercial taint, major label backing finds them ever more extreme. This album may not be quite as bleak as The Bairns, and the sound is more sophisticated, but they still sound like nobody else.

Here's The Tender Coming 

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Track 08

Resentie / Persbericht

Following on from their Mercury Prize nomination, Geordie folk inventors Rachel Unthank & The Winterset are back with a name tweak (The Unthanks), revised line-up and a brand new album Here’s The Tender Coming (EMI) that rests not one jot on the incomparable sound that has earned them admirers from the ranks of Radiohead, Portishead, Robert Wyatt, Ben Folds, Nic Jones, Ewan McGregor and Nick Hornby.

"The Bairns was so bleak and sparse that we didn't feel we could build on its intensity," explains Rachel, "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."

Here's The Tender Coming is named after the title track of the album, in which the Tender is the boat coming to press the men of the North-East into war, but as an album title, it works as a metaphor for the melancholic, reflective shift in mood from The Unthanks.