Peter Viney's Blog

Poole Lighthouse

Friday 22nd May 2026, 19.30

Rachel Unthanks – vocal, cello, clogs
Becky Unthanks – vocal, clogs
Adrian McNally- piano, vocal, hand pumped harmonium
Niopha Keegan – violin, vocal

SET LIST
Corrections welcome. I’m not sure about the Shipbuilding set or the Molly Drake set, and the one after Shipbuilding was announced as from a film or play and it sounded like Helmut but I can’t find the song.

One by One
Hawthorn
Fair Rosamund
Shall Earth No More Inspire Me
Shipbuilding set:
– The Romantic Tees
– Tyne Slides By
– The Looking Back Song
– Shipbuilding
(Helmut song)
The Bay of Fundy

INTERVAL

Bees (Honey Bee)
The Bee-Boy’s Song
She Dried Her Tears and They Did Smile
Suicide in The Trenches
The Testimony of Patience Kershaw
Close The Coalhouse Door
Magpie
The Scarecrow Knows
Molly Drake Set:
– Woods in May
– How Wild The Wind Blows
– Set Me Free
The King of Rome

ENCORE

I’m Weary From Lying Alone
Here’s The Tender Coming

The Unthanks. Never the same line up, never the same set list. It’s what keeps so many coming to see them. This is the absolute core line up of four, although the 2019 unaccompanied tour cut it to just the three singers.

It’s a strange set, drawing considerably from the Lines short albums. It was definitely uncommercial in the sense that few of their best known songs were played. It also veered heavily to somber, gentle songs. They joked about it, but if you were after cheerful Geordie folk, you weren’t going to get it.

You could focus on Adrian McNally’s piano, and Niopha Keegan’s violin playing though. Both sounded more classical than folk. The 60s extremists disliked piano as too complex for a humble peasant to build. However, given the date of the first serious attempts to archive and catalogue folk, every pub had a piano for a singalong. This is not ‘singalong’ piano playing though. It was outstanding as was the violin, which befits a classical concert hall. There was also a fair amount of unaccompanied singing.

They started with One by One, just Becky, Raphel and Niopha. It was on the Live and Unaccompanied set. A Connie Converse song, the first of two. Converse is a seriously obscure American songwriter, born in 1924, she simply disappeared in Michigan in 1974, never to be seen again. A private investigator was hired to find her, but came back saying she had a right to disappear. She did. She recorded little, and was rediscovered in the 2000s.

Hawthorn was on Mount The Air, sung by Becky. The song is credited to Charles Causley, Becky Unthank and Adrian McNally. Causley was a Cornish poet, so sets the tone for an evening when several songs are poems put to music.

Fair Rosamund goes all the way back to the Rachel Unthanks & Winterset Cruel Sister album in 2005. It’s traditional and is the tale of Rosamund Clifford, the mistress of King Henry II. I just looked that up. It’s a surprise, as the collocation of a King Henry and sexual adventures usually refers to Henry VIII. Rachel found it in an American version by Hedy West.

Rachel Unthank: I’ve slightly Anglicised and slowed down this peculiar story, which is about the concubine of King Henry II and an implied incestuous undercurrent emanating from her protective brother “young Clifford”. The vivid imagery really stands out to me and I love telling this mysterious tale.

We’re continuing with poets, and Lines 3: Emily Brontë. I consider Emily to be Britain’s greatest author, just on the one book, Wuthering Heights. Adrian got to play it on Emily’s own piano at Haworth. Here it is. My photo. I wonder if they were allowed to tune it? The song was Shall Earth No More Inspire Me. Well, it’s pretty bleak around those moors.

The parsonage at Haworth is a fine Georgian building in a good-sized town. I’d been expecting a Gothic pile on the wild moors.

We saw them perform Songs From The Shipyards live to the film at Southampton. While I’m not100% on the Shipbuilding set, they started with Adrian on piano with seagulls over the sound system, and it’s about Middlesborough, so The Romantic Tees. Then Tyne Goes By is by Alex Glasgow and The Looking Back Song is by Johnny Handle. Eric Burdon used to maintain that The Animals learned House of The Rising Sun from Johnny Handle, when everyone knows they copped it from the first Bob Dylan LP. Such is folk. We get to hear Adrian on lead vocal.

Then there was Shipbuilding, the stand out song. I instantly think of it as Robert Wyatt, but it was written for him by Declan McManus ( Elvis Costello) and Clive Langer.

I have no idea what the next song was. They mentioned a play or film, and I think Helmut, but I can’t find it or at this point remember any words. I’m happy to be corrected.

The set finished with The Bay of Fundy (aka Till The Tide Comes In), always that favourite moment when Rachel and Becky don the clogs and demonstrate their skills. There was supposed to be audience singalong, but they put less into getting us to do it than usual. It’s from Sorrows Away and is a modern folk song by Gordon Bok. It was a change of direction in that The Unthanks released this one as a single.

Rachel Unthank: We heard Alan Fitzsimmons and The Keelers (other members Jim Mageean, Peter Wood and our dad, George Unthank) sing this song while we were growing up. Fundy Bay has the largest tides in the world. This song is about being aboard a boat stuck on the tide waiting’for days and weeks to be delivered ashore. The lyrics have a sense of isolation and loneliness, allowing for contemplation of the magnitude of nature compared to our tiny selves.

THE INTERVAL

Adrian and Niopha were doing sterling business at the concessions stand. I bought the vinyl set of Lines 1-3, I thought a bargain at £20 in a box set. It already had the CD, but the 10″ vinyl was too tempting. And it’s £40 on amazo.

The second set opened with the glorious Conny Converse song Bees (Honey Bee), sung unaccompanied.

They moved straight to The Bee-Boy’s Song. It’s one of the Rudyard Kipling poems from Puck of Pook’s Hill (see it’s a theme) which Peter Bellamy set to music in 1965 on Merlin’s Isle of Gramercy. Both songs were on Diversions 5: Live and Unaccompanied.

Back to the withering wind on the wuthering moors for another visit to Emily Brontë, with She Dried Her Tears and They Did Smile.

I mentioned that it was a somber set. No more so than on the next, Siegfried Sassoon’s poem Suicide In The Trenches, set to music by Adrian McNally. It’s from Lines Two: World War One. Rachel added cello.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

The Testimony of Patience Kershaw was my companion’s outstanding song of the evening. They recorded it on Here’s The Tender Coming. Its strength is as a narrative ballad based on real events and a real testimony of 1842. I like story songs too.

Close The Coalhouse Door continues the nod to their better-known songs. This one’s from Last. Adrian adds the drone of the hand-operated harmonium.

More drone accompaniment. We’re now into Greatest Hit with Magpie. This is a song they will have to do whenever they walk on stage for the rest of their careers. It was my earworm from the concert. They recorded it on Mount The Air and again on Live and Unaccompanied. It’s by David Dodds. I’ve got The Demon Barbers version too. It dates back to the 1960s.

Sound Tradition: Apparently, David Dodds had given a lift to an old lady who insisted on quoting: “Devil, devil, I defy thee”, and spitting of the floor of his new car every time she saw a magpie (a traditional response to counteract the bird’s supposedly evil effect). Understandably, it didn’t go down too well. However, it resulted in this wonderful song. A well-known superstitious rhyme is used as a chorus; also included are many widely held folk beliefs about the bird.

I woke up with it playing in my head and went to open the blinds. There are usually two magpies on the lawn. Today there was just one. One for sorrow … I felt a chill on the back of my neck.

The Scarecrow Knows was done for Mackenzie Crook’s Worzel Gummidge. Yes, the McKenzie Crook who put Magpie into his TV series The Detectorists. The song was written by Adrian McNally and Rachel Unthank. The soundtrack is on Spotify which I never use.

We move into the Molly Drake set. For me there was a degree of ‘fun over.’ It’s back to somber. I just don’t take to Molly Drake. I’ve tried. But then I astonish people by not taking to Nick Drake either. Not even Five Leaves Left. I think the three were Woods in May, How Wild The Wind Blows and Set Me Free. They add a recorded Molly Drake.

The King of Rome is the closer, a strong story song too. It is by Dave Sudbury and dates to the 1980s. It’s yet another reminder that The Unthanks differ from (say) Fay Hield, Bellowhead, Spiers & Boden or Sam Lee, in that so much of their material is not ancient Cecil Sharp House pre-history folk.

The encores started with unaccompanied, and Niopha Keegan on lead vocal for I’m Weary From Lying Alone, a traditional Irish song.

Then it was all four for another better known track, the title track Here’s The Tender Coming.

A beautiful evening, as expected, of sublime singing and playing, but we felt a tad gloomy rather than uplifted.

OTHER UNTHANKS REVIEWS ON THIS SITE
The Unthanks 03.11
The Unthanks 04.2012
The Unthanks 10.2012
The Unthanks 12.11
The Unthanks 2.2015
The Unthanks 5.2017
The Unthanks 2019
The Unthanks 2022
The Unthanks 2024