Mount the Air

Untitled

Mount the Air, the eight album by English folk group The Unthanks, was released on 9 February 2015. It received a five-starred review in The Daily Telegraph and four-starred reviews in The Financial Times and The Guardian.

The title track was issued as a single on 8 December 2014. "Flutter", another track from the album, was released as a single on 16 February 2015.

Reception

Mount the Air received a five-starred review in The Daily Telegraph. Reviewer Helen Brown described the album as "a slow, swirling affair that mixes original material with traditional tales. Underpinned by McNally’s cool, fluid piano it’s simultaneously ancient and fresh."

In a four-starred review for The Financial Times, David Honigmann said: "Once a bleak Northumbrian chamber folk outfit, the Unthanks have reinvented themselves on a symphonic scale, as witness the 10-minute title track, ushered in on harps and with an orchestration that recalls Gil Evans’s work for Miles Davis." Robin Denselow, in a four-starred review for The Guardian, said: "This is a return to the gentle melancholia of Last, and while there are fine vocals from the Unthank sisters, the dominant figure is Rachel’s husband, Adrian McNally, who plays keyboards and percussion, and produced and wrote much of the music... It’s a lush, often exquisite set". Teddy Jamieson, writing in the Sunday Herald, said: "The Unthanks return with an album that takes the folk tradition the sisters grew up on and sails it into wilder waters... Folk's storytelling tradition is still very much at the heart of this album. But what thrills here is the sense of scale at play in the music, the unrushed, easeful way the musicians stretch into songs, let them linger without ever overstaying their welcome. That and the earthy humanity of the sisters' voices."

In a four-starred review, Chris White, for musicOMH, said that Mount the Air "continues The Unthanks’ journey away from the traditional north-east folk of their earlier albums towards a style that’s uniquely their own. It’s hard to think of another group anywhere who are creating music quite like this; still grounded in the sounds and spirit of their native region yet compositionally on a different planet to the pub back room strums and ceilidh jigs knocked out by most of their contemporaries."

However, The Observer's Neil Spencer bucked the trend, giving the album three stars, and criticising the "ambitious but lumbering orchestration... Two instrumentals eschew the group’s strength; more voices please".

Simon Holland, for Folk Radio UK, said: "With two tracks at over 10 minutes, this was never going to be a short album, but... [it] does what great albums do, takes you on a journey, offers surprises, but gives you rewards on route, satisfying head and heart, with some moments of pure emotional static charge that make the hairs on the neck stand proud."

Personnel

The Unthanks

• Rachel Unthank – voice
• Becky Unthank – voice
• Adrian McNally – piano, voice, celeste, kalimba, Fender Rhodes, chord organ, glockenspiel, Indian harmonium, percussion
• Niopha Keegan – quartet violin, solo fiddle, voice
• Chris Price – electric bass, guitar, piano tinkles on "Last Lullaby"

Additional musicians

• Lizzie Jones – trumpet, flugelhorn
• Martin Douglas – drums, percussion
• Dan Rogers – double bass
• Tom Arthurs – trumpet on "Mount the Air"
• Kathleen Ord – violin
• James Boyle – violin
• Gabriel Wait – cello
• Nick Byrne – cello
• Eilidh Gillespie – flute
• Esther Swift – harp

External links

• The Unthanks: official website