The Unthanks
Queen's Hall,Edinburgh
Ed Jamieson
**** (4stars)
The thrill of The Unthanks in 2015 is the new colours they've found to play with. On their new album Mount The Air they've been building on their folk foundations via their own take on jazz and even Reichian/Bryarsesque minimalism to great effect. And so it was here, on the last night of their tour in one of their favourite venues. While the voices of Becky and Rachel Unthank remain The Unthanks' USP, here they were buoyed up by an eight-piece band including Adrian McNally on piano, a four-piece string section and Victoria Rule's triumphant, soaring trumpet playing.
At its most expansive - on the ten-minute Mount The Air which ended the first half and was given a partial reprieve during the encores - it all came together in a giddy, enveloping swell, complete with trademark clog dancing from the sisters.
But in many ways it was the starker moments that stood out here, most notably the cover of Robert Wyatt and Alfie Benge's Out of the Blue where the astringency of the string arrangement matched the intensity of the lyric and Rachel Unthank's singing. It also gave the lie to those who fear that the new Unthanks' sound is lush but becalmed.
The question now is where do The Unthanks go next? And the challenge is to ensure that the voices of Rachel and Becky - the reason many of us started paying attention in the first place - don't become just another colour in the rainbow swirl of sound.
This performance, though, was a triumph of both technique and heart. By the end the sisters were holding hands, one lovely final human gesture on a night full of them.
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