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Last time Rachel and Becky Unthank played in York, they performed in a converted church as one half of folk quartet Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, whose debut album The Bairns came remarkably close to winning last year’s Mercury Prize. One year on, much has changed.
Resurfacing, renamed, at the Duchess (better known for its raucous club nights than as the all-seated, relaxed gig venue it slickly becomes for the occasion), the sisters’ now 10-strong band includes strings, brass, percussion, piano and guitar. Ideal for the gentle rhythms of their new album, Here’s the Tender Coming, the new line-up develops and enriches the Unthanks’ previous sound.
After a slow start with ‘Nobody Knew She Was There’ and ‘20 Long Weeks’, the minimalist album highlight ‘Lucky Gilchrist’ provides the first “clog-rock moment”, its Sufjan Stevens-esque repetitions moodier live than on record. The expanded musical forces perfectly complement the rhythmic character of ‘Gilchrist’ and the subtly arranged ‘Anarchie Gordon’, whilst ‘Sad February’ starts like any other folksong but explodes with brass by the end. It’s only on ‘Felton Lonnin’ that the instrumentation slightly overwhelms what was a spellbinding, sparser track on The Bairns.
The variety of Here’s the Tender Coming comes across most strongly in the juxtaposition of ‘Where’ve ya bin Dick’ and ‘At First She Starts’; the former is a cheeky a capella number, one of many traditional songs from the North of England beloved by the Unthanks, in complete contrast to the latter, a contemplative air with a stilling accompaniment of chamber strings.
Later in their set, a new version of Bairns track ‘Blackbird’ is dedicated to former band member (and York student) Stef Conner; a faultless pastiche of the Penguin Café Orchestra, the ukulele backing makes for the night's most successful reimagining of a Winterset song, the many vocal parts triumphant. With an immensely fun encore of the rip-roaring ‘Betsy Bell’ and the gradually building ‘Here’s the Tender Coming’, we can only hope that they’ll return to York again before too long.
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