Rachel Unthank & The Winterset: The Bairns

Rachel Unthank & The Winterset
The Bairns
Rabble Rousser
2007

Before they became simply The Unthanks they were Rachel Unthank & The Winterset. Today's Rediscovery is the first album I ever heard by this extraordinary British chamber folk group...but it would not be the last. The group's second album after its 2005 Rabble Rouser debut, Cruel Sister, 2007's The Bairns, was still early days for a group that, based around sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank, blended Northumbrian folk music from Great Britain with a variety of other music styles and sources.

At the time of The Bairns, the group was an all-female quartet, with vocalists Rachel (who added cello, ukulele and foot stomps on selected tracks) and Becky (also contributing some foot-stomping) joined by pianist/vocalist Belinda O'Hooley and fiddler/vocalist Niopha Keegan. But as with the group's debut, there are some guest appearances on The Bairns—though far fewer—including a string quartet and double bassist on the opening traditional piece, "Felton Lonnin," as well as melodion on the traditional "I Wish. " Melodion also figures on a faithful but still personal cover of Robert Wyatt's classic "Sea Song"—first heard on the ex-Soft Machine and Matching Mole singer/songwriter'a Rock Bottom (Virgin, 1974)—that defined the soon-to-be just Unthanks as a group not bound by any predefined stylistic or musical confines and, instead, one operating with the philosophy that good music is wherever you find it.

Eight of The Bairns's 15 tracks are from traditional source rearranged by the group, with the rest of the album fleshed out by a series of originals by everyone from Belinda O'Hooley and American singer/songwriter Bonnie Prince Billy to singer/songwriters Richard Scott, the departed Terry Conway, and Owen Hand— whose career in the 1960s was relatively brief (just over four years), but who left a small but still influential legacy including "My Donald," a whaling song sung, by Becky, with the unembellished, air-filled voice that has become a recognizable signature.

By the time of Here's the Tender Coming (Rabble Rouser, 2009), the renamed Unthanks had lost its all-female status and expanded to a quintet, with pianist/percussionist Adrian McNally replacing O'Hooley, and Chris Price bringing guitar, bass, ukulele and more to the mix. Last (Rabble Rouser, 2011) caught the attention of progressive rock fans for its inclusion of a remarkable, imaginative reworking of King Crimson's partially balladic, symphonic "Starless," from its 1970s studio swan song, Red (Island, 1975), that was as distanced from the progressive rock leanings of the original as would be expected.

The subsequent couple of years brought a series of recordings called Diversions—three themed live albums that included Vol. 1: The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Anthony & The Johnsons (Rabble Rouser, 2011), Vol. 2: With Brightnkuse and Rastrick Brass Band (Rabble Rouser, 2012) and Vol. 3: Songs from the Shipyards (Rabbls Rouser, 2012), and saw The Unthanks expand from its core quintet to as many as nearly 30 musicians. But with its first studio album in four years (Mount in the Air) imminent, and promising to take augment its "grounded tradition and filmic orchestration" with "traditions as diverse as Spain, India, Blue Note and, er, Trip Hop"—and the group's first to feature writing from all five members including McNally's expansive, 10-minute opening title track—it seemed like a good time to look back at The Bairns...an album less ambitious in scope but still demonstrating the building blocks that The Unthanks would expand upon. For fans of British folk music that doesn't have to be shackled by the chains of tradition, The Bairns is a grand entry point into a discography that keeps getting better with each successive album.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you know this record, and if so, how do you feel about it?


[Note: You can read the genesis of this Rediscovery column here .]

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