Reviews

Yet it’s only when she’s experienced live that you realise how much of her attraction is down to her Winterset, otherwise known as fellow singer and sister Becky, pianist Belinda O’Hooley and fiddler Niopha Keegan.

Tonight, for all Rachel’s clear-voiced Geordie charm, it’s actually the moments when the smoky, cracked sound of Becky leads the singing that the group are most successful, be it in duets like the thrilling Blackbird or as a solo performer, as on the stunning version of Robert Wyatt’s Sea Song.

Rachel Unthank & the Winterset

Yet, the night belonged to neither Unthank but to Belinda on piano. Not only did she provide two of the most striking moments with her own compositions - the aforementioned jaunt of Blackbird and the crushingly sad Whitethorn - but her unstoppable dry humour between songs made for many a Victoria Wood-esque moment.

Indeed, so strong were her one-liners, that they even topped Becky’s crushingly beautiful take on My Donald and the Unthank sisters’ party piece clog-dancing halfway through the rolling amalgamation of Northumbrian folk snippets that is Blue’s Gaen Oot O’the Fashion.

That show-stealing could also have been down to simple timing. There was a naivety to the song selection that would have floundered the gig had it not been for Belinda’s interludes.

Much of Rachel Unthank’s music is prog-rock size slabs of folk, weighing in at eight minutes a time, and their sheer cavernous darkness means as beautiful as they are, they can become impossibly heavy without the skit-type interludes that she includes on The Bairns.

Still, such things are ironed out with experience and, given the school-girl nervousness to both Rachel and Becky, that is still being gathered.

And let’s face it, given the hypnotic and bewitching nature of the show, what real criticism can you make of such a collection of very special and natural talents?