Acclaimed folk band, The Unthanks make a welcome return to Galway

Date Published: 24-Mar-2011

The Unthanks make a welcome return to Róisín Dubh on Tuesday, April 12. The acclaimed folk band are back with their new album Last, the follow-up to Here’s The Tender Coming, which featured in The Guardian Best Albums of the Year and was awarded Mojo Magazine Folk Album of the Year.

For all the acclaim for their their albums to date, the Mercury Music Prize nominated Tyneside group, headed by Rachel and Becky Unthank have become most legendary for their live performances.

Empathetic stories of love, loss, birth, death, brawls and booze make for a rollercoaster ride through the human condition, as Rachel and Becky’s folk-club unaccompanied singing upbringing is set against otherworldly musical pictures, arranged by a band with influences from Steve Reich to Miles Davis, Martin Hayes to Robert Wyatt, Portishead to Sufjan Stevens.

It’s hard to conceive how music could sound so traditional and adventurous at once. It is a spell that has earned them fans as disparate as members of Radiohead and Portishead, Nick Hornby, Elvis Costello, Robert Wyatt, Ewan McGregor, Ryan Adams, Paul Morley, Ben Folds, Rosanne Cash and Dawn French!

The Unthanks have been described as “supernaturally ancient and defiantly modern, as coldly desolate as achingly intimate”. They will play music from their new album, as well as from their previous records.

This gig is not just for committed folkies – anyone with a love for heartfelt, well-played and moving music should go to this show. Doors 9pm, tickets €20/€18.