Unthank : Smith

Steeped in storytelling and formed in 2018, the north-east England folk duo comprise Rachel Unthank of Northumbrian ballad specialists, the Unthanks and Paul Smith, frontman of the energetic Mercury Prize-nominated indie rock act Maximo Park. Their pared-down arrangements of traditional songs, covers of material in the folk idiom, and occasional original compositions benefit from an intensity borne of their disparate primary projects. Released under the Rachel Unthank & The Winterset moniker, Unthank's debut album, Cruel Sister, appeared in May 2005, the very same month that Maximo Park's platinum-selling debut, A Certain Trigger, was issued. Their careers took markedly different paths, with the Unthanks maintaining a low-key, but steady and continuous relevance due to the timelessness of their repertoire, while the more high-profile Maximo Park sent each of their first seven albums into the U.K. Top 20. Unthank's and Smith's paths first crossed in 2013 at a Middlesborough-held Africa Express event. They found a connection in their shared enthusiasm for grunge music, as well as for the Wilson Family, a folk act from Smith's County Durham hometown of Billingham. It transpired that Smith also had harbored a love for the folk guitar fingerpicking style of Bert Jansch and Nick Drake since his teenage years. A friendship blossomed and the pair subsequently resolved to work together, but it was initially tricky to find the time for this in their busy schedules. Following the Unthanks' 2017 set, The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake and Maximo Park's Risk to Exist from the same year, the pair first performed as a duo in 2018. This was at a Lauren Laverne-curated evening related to The Great Exhibition of the North. Next, the BBC 6Music DJ invited Unthank : Smith to record a session for her show, and following that performance, the duo went into David Brewis' Sunderland studio. Accompanied by Faye MacCalman of Archipelago on clarinet and Alex Neilson of Trembling Bells on drums, sessions for their debut album, Nowhere and Everywhere, were completed before the end of the year. However, a combination of further schedule clashes and the COVID-19 pandemic, meant that it wasn't issued for another four years. Once the Unthanks' October 2022 album Sorrows Away was out in the world, the following month saw the release of Unthank : Smith's debut single. The double-A-side, "The Natural Urge" b/w "Seven Tears," contained a solo composition from each bandmember. When Nowhere and Everywhere eventually appeared in February 2023, those tracks were joined by interpretations of traditional songs -- "Captain Bover," "Lord Bateman," and "The King" -- alongside covers of material by Richard Watson, Tom Pickard, Lal Waterson, and Graeme Miles. The album was followed by a brief U.K. tour with a backing group that featured both MacCalman and Neilson.
© James Wilkinson /TiVo