Rachel Unthank and The Winterset, The Bairns (Rough Trade)

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For hundreds of years, rural England has bred balladry which reads like news reports from the soul, describing death, loss, longing, and wavering faith, and featuring a cast of remorseful murderers, lovers joined only by the roots entwining their buried bones, wives all along the coast pacing their widow´s walks, scanning the sea for a glimpse of a homeward bound husband. Absence is indeed perhaps the most common leitmotif.

Rachel Unthank and The Winterset are of the tradition but not from the tradition. They seem to have risen from some deep bog untouched by time and technology, avatars of the ancients. Most of their material is in the public domain but it dovetails perfectly with covers of Will Oldham and Robert Wyatt and a wonderful tune or two by bandmember Belinda O´Hooley, who knows why the blackbird sings.

Unthank has a lovely voice which wends its way through Northumbrian sod fire smoke as it recounts with cruel frankness scenes from everyday life - fights, whiskey binges, domestic trouble, unwanted pregnancy and most heart-wrenchingly a woman lamenting that the cows have come home for the night, but not her small children.

However it is not all funereal dirge and the ladies prove that even a protest song can be danced to. The long, penultimate track is an anthem to the simple pleasures of friends, civility and a warm fire in the winter, with each of them taking turns at the mic. And the finale is almost literally a dreamy lullabye.

http://www.roughtraderecords.com