Nowhere and Everywhere

Paul Smith, of Maxïmo Park, met Rachel Unthank, of The Unthanks, when both played an Africa Express concert. Collaboration between an alternative rock and hardcore folk singer seems unlikely, but The Unthanks are musical explorers – recording the songs of Robert Wyatt, working with writer Nick Hornby. Smith's father was a founder member of Redcar Sword Dancers, his son's exposure to folk growing into a love of Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch.

Smith brought ‘The Natural Urge’, his song inspired by Paul Nash's paintings of the ravaged landscapes of the First World War, to Unthank to test the waters. It worked: Smith in Newcastle and Unthank, from Northumbria, began working on the songs of north-east England that became Nowhere and Everywhere.

It's courageous, opening and closing with unaccompanied duets, with another in the middle. Smith sings without the rock vocalist histrionics, fitting comfortably with Unthanks’ pure, unfussy delivery. The selection of songs is canny: In ‘O’ Mary Will You Go’ a man urges his lover to emigrate with him, she's reticent and the song becomes a dramatic dialogue. Each has their own part, too, in the ballad of incarceration and escape, ‘Lord Bateman’.

Smith plays guitars spaciously, Alex Neilson is a subtle percussionist and Faye MacCalman's clarinet moves in waves around the voices, from low and ominous to a high whistle in ‘Horumarye’, the Graeme Miles’ onomatopoeically titled exploration of moorland wind. Arrangements evolve into soundscapes, for instance in ‘Seven Tears’, Unthanks’ chant-like song about selkies (seals who shed their skins to adopt human form but always, eventually, return to sea).