Sorrows Away

The Unthanks have been closing their concerts with the title-track of their new album and finding that audiences are singing it back to them. This is, after the isolation of lockdown when live performance in the presence of a crowd was impossible, a coming together in an act of cathartic joy, casting the sorrow away. Sorrows Away, though, is not relentlessly joyous. ‘The Sandgate Dandling Song’ might be full of love, but it is overshadowed by domestic violence. ‘The Month of January’ is the lament of a young woman deserted by her lover, left abandoned with a baby and thrown out by her parents.

This incarnation of The Unthanks, a ten-piece ensemble, provides ample resources for producer Adrian McNally’s ambitious arrangements – bass and brass adornments on ‘The Isabella Coke Ovens’; a church organ sound on ‘My Singing Bird’, countered by Lizzie Jones’s exuberant trumpet; trumpet again on ‘The Royal Blackbird’, and insistent drums. They cite Steve Reich, Massive Attack and Isaac Hayes as musical reference points. Sorrows Away is a work of great musical variety. At its centre is the limpid singing of sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank. This remains the constant that’s a characteristic of their music and yet I can’t help wishing that they sounded less detached, interacting more with the music being made around them.