MOJO PRESENTS

UK folk pathfinders THE UNTHANKS celebrate their 20th anniversary with special shows this month. Their family bond and creative health abide – with unexpected support from Robert Wyatt and Mackenzie Crook – but they’ve been tested, emotionally and financially, again and again. “Every year it’s a leap of faith,” they tell JIM WIRTH .

FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF 2007’s THE BAIRNS, THE SECOND LP SHE HAD RECORDED backing her sister Rachel, second year art history student Becky Unthank approached her tutors in Manchester to ask for permission to defer for a year to dedicate herself to her music. “They were like: ‘Yeah, good luck, see you, have a good life,’” she tells MOJO. “And I was like: ‘No, I’m coming back.’ They didn’t believe me at all. I had hardly ever been there because I was always on tour.”

Seven years Becky’s senior, Rachel had been working in schools while her and her then partner Adrian McNally worked on arrangements for the band – then known as Rachel Unthank And The Winterset. The reception for their records had been reasonably rapturous, but she was wary of dragging her sister into a fairly insecure life. Gingerly, the sisters approached their folkie parents to ask for permission to chase their dream.

“They were like: ‘Oh, God, I thought you were going to say Becky’s pregnant or something,’” jokes Rachel. “‘Go for it!’ We were young and we didn’t have a lot of responsibility. But every year it’s a leap of faith.”

OVER THE WINTER, THE UNTHANKS – RACHEL AND BECKY, McNALLY, VIOLINIST NIOPHA Keegan and guitarist Chris Price – have been celebrating 20 years of just about getting by with a run of shows at favourite venues, culminating in a series of concerts with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Becky and Rachel’s intertwining harmonies, unvarnished Tyneside accents and occasional sideline in clog Ainslie Henderson, Vaughan Pickhaver/Shutterstock, Sarah Mason dancing would have made them an enduring folk circuit turn in any era, but the magic of The Unthanks has been their ability to cross boundaries. Their increasingly lavish arrangements show reverence to the old songs, though their interests have always extended way beyond the strictly traditional.