The Unthanks are an English folk group led by sisters Rachel and Becky Unthanks. That's their real family name. Though they were born, seven years apart, in the small, Northern English county of Tyne and Wear, they now call Northumberland home. They sing in a regional dialect and with regional accents, and they also organize residential "singing weekends" through their website, traditional holidays that include "singarounds and workshops, short coastal walks, singing in the pub and food to write home about." They're serious about singing.
There is much cultural reference, mystery, and beauty to be found on Last, a lot of which can't be untangled by Google. The opening "Gan to the Kye" is a beautiful example, a piano-based standard about a plot, cattle, and a dead collie in the fields. Its titular refrain is a reference to an old plural word for "cows." Equally heart-breaking is "The Gallowgate Lad", a flowing, six-minute tale of a wayward militia man, sung from the perspective of a concerned lover. And then there's the seven-minute "Close the Coalhouse Door", a song whose slurry of fiddle and piano adds an ethereal sheet of light ("Close the coal house door, lad/ There's bones inside") to the darkness of the industrial tragedy at its center. It's an unforgettable vocal performance, and while parts of Last can feel so rooted in tradition that it takes on a museum piece feel, "Close the Coalhouse Door" is theirs alone. Here they seem less about purism and more about their own impressions.
When they dip into jazzier fare in "Give Away Your Heart" or offer a string-laced cover of Tom Waits' "No One Knows I'm Gone", Last verges on the staunchly traditional, but their singing takes the music somewhere else. And it has to, since both the instrumentation and the arrangements are stately and simple-- there's not much besides trumpet, piano, autoharp, fiddle, and strings. Rachel possesses a voice that's smooth and unfailing, while her younger sister Becky's has much more grain to it. The revolving harmonies of "Canny Hobbie Elliot" are emblematic of how well they can work together. Though it's one of the few songs on Last that isn't sad and bleak, their voices come together just so, and the result is mystifying and devastating.
