The Unthanks
How Wild The Wind Blows Tour
Turner Sims Concert Hall
University of Southampton
Tuesday 2nd May 2017 19.30
The Unthanks
Becky Unthank – voice
Rachel Unthank – voice
Adrian McNally – piano, voice
Niopha Keegan – violin, viola, voice
Chris Price – double bass, guitar, voice
Faye MacCalman – clarinet, tenor sax
with the recorded voice of Gabrielle Drake
THE SONGS OF MOLLY DRAKE
The Unthanks knew it wasn’t a one-off event when they sub-titled their The Songs of Robert Wyatt & Antony & The Johnsons as “Diversions Vol. 1”. They followed it with Diversions Vol 2 The Unthanks with The Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band and Diversions Vol 3 Songs From The Shipyards, which they toured accompanying the film live in cinemas.
Vol 4 is How Wild The Wind Blows: The songs and poems of Molly Drake and continues the bold and rare move of a band performing a whole concert without playing any of their own recorded repetoire. This is the boldest of the four, as the songs of Molly Drake must be entirely new to most of the audiences, as they are to me. Molly Drake was Nick Drake’s mother, and her home recordings of her songs were made in the 1950s. They were made on a domestic Ferrograph recorder with her piano accompaniment, and eventually released as Molly Drake in 2013 and the genre listed as “English folk. Parlour Song.” While the release was well-reviewed, I’ve never seen a copy (It is being reissued as The Tide’s Magnificence in the Autumn of 2017, available for pre-order at brytermusic.com/unthanks). A commercial choice would have been the songs of her son, Nick Drake. Over the decades, Nick Drake’s legacy, Five Leaves Left, Bryter Later and Pink Moon have been elevated in critical opinion. I bought the first two albums years ago, but have to admit I have not been a major fan.
Still, the Unthanks don’t make commercial choices, and have chosen to present MOLLY Drake to wider audiences. They have worked with her daughter, the actress Gabrielle Drake (Nick’s sister) to add poems, and also to recreate some songs in the oral tradition, i.e. from Gabrielle’s memory. They have chosen smaller venues than their norm too, due to “the intimate nature of the music.” I’d love to have bought the album in advance, but they have cannily decided to release it on 26th May at the end of the tour … however, it is available at shows. So for me, and most people, every song will be fresh.
The album has a second Extras disc. The two are available as a bundle from The Unthanks website , either as two CDs or as a 12″ LP plus a 10″ 8 track LP. Obviously I bought them in the interval. You need both … some key tracks like Poor Mum and Happiness are on the Extras disc.
THE SETTING
The Turner Sims Concert Hall is part of the university music department, and is a first rate smaller classical music venue with impeccable acoustic. The audience is raked, with performers on the flat floor. It was a theatrical experience, recreating the ambience of a 1950s living room. Adrian’s grand piano in the middle, flowers on a table, two white wicker armchairs for Becky and Rachel (when not singing), half a dozen or more standard lamps. Either side had a white cloth, which looked like a curtain, but which was used to project photos of Molly Drake. A brilliant touch was that the light soft fabric rustled slightly, seeming to animate her face, and make her look as if she were breathing.
At the end, with Do You Ever Remember? home video footage of Molly Drake and her children was projected over the song. Nick Drake was camera shy and reluctant even as a toddler on this evidence. It’s extremely poignant. Another theatrical touch was a programme on every seat.
THE SET LIST
I check setlist.com for earlier dates in a tour and just tick them off usually. As the set had been consistent for three dates, I didn’t bother. I sat back and relaxed and lost myself in the music. Because I’d read the setlist from previous dates, I realised towards the end of the first part that they had changed the running order, and had done so radically. The set for this tour includes clipping in spoken voice interludes over music, and integrating photos and Molly Drake’s home videos, as well as an elaborate and subtle lighting plot. They have decided after a few dates to change things. Thus I have only a vague idea of the running order, though I assume all the songs were done. The sequence tonight sounded “so right” that it’s hard to imagine it any other way. I do know that the last three of the first set were Happiness, Set Me Free and The Little Weaver Bird. The last has an excellent instrumental play out, which is faded on the record, but extended live, making it an ideal song to lead into the interval. I also realised that the poem The Shell and the song Soft-Shelled Crabs came earlier in part two, between Poor Mum and The Road To The Stars. The earlier setlist skipped The Woods in May and The First Day but they were in this set. Maybe false memory, but I think that like the album (which I’ve been playing today) they began with What Can A Song Do To You?
THE MUSIC
So you haven’t heard Molly Drake? As interpreted by The Unthanks her music is ethereal, sensitive, transporting. After a stressful few days, we both found it took us completely out of ourselves. The beautifully calm and precise voice of Gabrielle Drake on the poems was integrated into the musical backing at points, segueing into the songs.
The relationship to Nick Drake’s music is transparent, there is that jazzy edge. In one case Poor Mum seems to be an answer disc to Nick Drake’s Poor Son. The genre? We could argue what is “folk” but at one point they said after a song (Bird In The Blue I think), That’s probably the most folk of her songs.
‘Parlour Songs’ does fit some of it rather better. Soft-Shelled Crabs (much more live than on the disc) made me think of Leonard Cohen’s jaunty “European Café” style. Then Happiness really made me think of Edwardian “parlour music” – a style which Hinge & Bracket lampooned in the 1980s. It isn’t like the Hinge & Bracket men-in-drag send up at all, but especially live it reminded me of The Beautiful Old album by Marsteller & Rhodes from 2013 (reviewed on this blog). It’s a compilation of popular songs from 1820 to 1918 performed by modern artistes from Richard Thompson & Christine Collister, to Heidi Talbot, and Dave Davies, and on to Garth Hudson. On this “folk” question, The Unthanks is folk with shimmering piano. In the 1960s I recall The Young Tradition and suchlike having increasing disdain for complex instruments as “more technology” was needed to make them, thus they were not available to the rural farm labourer, who had to be satisfied with clogs, knee slapping and possibly a penny whistle. Pianos and saxophones, for example, may not be electric, but require metallurgy of a high standard. Surely the point is that even in the mid-19th century, the humblest pub (urban or rural) had a piano in the bar. Piano is genuine folk! The Unthanks have added Faye MacCalman on clarinet to their basic line up (another reasonably high-tech instrument but arguably an improvement on the humbler recorder or flute). The interwoven clarinet and Niopha Keegan’s violin throughout the evening was inspired and inspiring.
As ever, The Unthanks can perform sublimely unaccompanied, as in Poor Mum with Niopha joining Rachel and Becky on voices only. The first encore was the only departure from Molly Drake, and it was Nick Drake’s River Man. Beautifully done, and I admired Chris Price’s double bass line holding the awkward 5/4 time signature.
The Extras CD (also on 10″ vinyl)
This is an intriguing and intimate concert. The asides, the theatricality, the pictures all draw you in, but above all of it is the haunting voices of Rachel and Becky with sublime backing music, taking a completely new songwriter through to me and making the entire evening a transcendent experience.
APPROXIMATE GUESS OF SETLIST (based on earlier ones)
How Wild The Wind Blows part I
Dog On The Wheel (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
What Can A Song Do For You?
Martha (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
Dream Your Dreams
Bird In The Blue
The Woods in May
Two Worlds (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
I Remember
Happiness
Set Me Free
Little Weaver Bird
Intermission
How Wild The Wind Blows part II
The First Day
Never Pine For The Old Love
Primary Colour (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
Night Is My Friend
Poor Mum
The Shell (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
Soft Shelled Crabs
The Road To The Stars
Well Is It Finished (Voice of Gabrielle Drake)
Do You Ever Remember?
Encore
River Man (by Nick Drake)
Dream Your Dreams (reprise)
OTHER UNTHANKS REVIEWS ON THIS SITE:
- The Unthanks 03.2011
- The Unthanks 04.2012
- The Unthanks 10.2012
- The Unthanks 12.2011
- The Unthanks 2.2015
- FLIT 10. 2016 (with Becky Unthank)