Venue:
Basingstoke Anvil
Date: 28/04/2017
Like mushrooms , which I don’t but that’s another story, I have a preference towards darkness and fretting over the intricacies of life’s bigger questions. Whether it be love, death, time, space or the nature of reality – it’s very much in my wheelhouse. Which is where we find The Unthanks and their latest Diversion, No.4, using the words or Molly Drake, poetess, songwriter and mother to the more well known, Gabrielle and Nick.
Cards on the table I knew very little about Molly before I heard about this project, Actually pretty much nothing apart from being Nick & Gabrielle’s mum. I expect this may be the experience of many attendees of this tour and listeners to the album and I can say that it’s perfectly fine. In fact I had preordered the album and it’s accompanying 8 track mini album ‘Extras’ which had duly arrived 2 days before the show but deliberately delayed listening so I could experience the songs for the first time in a live setting.
For these shows The Unthanks are a more streamlined setup which serves the songs best – Becky, Rachel & Adrian on piano, Niopha Keegan on strings, Chris Price on bass and water effects plus newbie Faye MacCalman on clarinet and sax. The backing to Rachel & Becky’s vocals are at times sparse and atmospheric but also complex and rising with the words.
The songs are often top n tailed with the disembodied voice of Gabrielle Drake, speaking her mother’s words which add a haunting pathos to the evening and the material. The songs themselves often deal with the darker side of existence but that doesn’t mean it is a morose or depressing listen. Ok it’s ain’t no disco but there is hope and sunshine In many of the thoughts expressed – “Never pine for the old love / go out and find the new” , ‘Dream Your Dream’” which is arranged like a valedictory torch song and ‘Poor Mum’ which is a response to Nick Drake’s ‘Poor Boy’ lamenting the lost dreams or chances of her life. ‘Soft Shelled Crabs’ muses on the brittleness of some when weathering life’s storms but with a sparklingly witty lyric.
The stage is simply dressed with wicker armchairs, standard lamps and chintzy décor, two cloth screens used to display images of Molly, mostly in stark black and white echoing all the images of Nick Drake ever seen but when they burst into colour during main set closer ‘Road To The Stars’ we appreciate this wasn’t a life lived in monochrome. The band return for Becky to deliver a stunningly sultry and wistfully mystical version of Nick’s ‘River Man’ – which stretches like a long lazy riverboat.
It takes confidence to play all new songs and The Unthanks have faith that their audience are grown up enough to go with them on the journey.
Through the Unthanks presentation of her work we come to know Molly Drake and appreciate her art – this moving, uplifting and perfectly marvellous show is a great tribute to her and the musical beauty of The Unthanks. Long may their varied diversions continue.
The audience:
Not a camera phone waver ( I took the above shot at the end – no music was harmed), nor talker, nor rustler (cattle or sweetie packet) in the room.
It made me think..
You can get a copy of Diversions Vol.4 ‘ The Songs & Words Of Molly Drake’ direct from the band before it’s release at the end of May. Or alternatively, get a ticket, go see this for yourselves and join the heaving throng at the merch table.
http://www.the-unthanks.com/Diversions-Vol-4-pre-order/
Kaisfatdad says
Excellent review. I am very envious. The CD just arrived but I would dearly love to see this show live.
Artery says
I saw the Unthanks in Brum on Wednesday. I am a huge Nick Drake fan and this was a fitting and very moving performance. I had not realised until I spoke to Adrian during the interval just how closely Gabrielle and Cally from the ND estate had been involved with the project. The colour cine film of young Nick and Gabrielle with Molly on a beach in Burma are the first moving images of Nick Drake in colour ever to be publicly shown. No film of Nick as an adult exists as far as is known.
There is an expanded 2 CD edition of the Molly Drake recordings to be released in the summer as well as a lavish book of Molly’s poetry.
It was a lovely evening.
Wayfarer says
I plumped for Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker at The Musician over The Unthanks in Brum on the same night but we got a superb version of Time Has Told Me, which I hope they will record.
duco01 says
Mmm. A nice version of Time Has Told me. Thanks for that, Wayfarer.
Is it just me, or did they stick in an extra verse about two-thirds of the way through? I don’t think I recognised it from Nick Drake’s original, anyway…
Wayfarer says
Hmmm. I’ll have to dig out the original and have a listen.
Gatz says
I’m going to the tiny Albany arts venue in Deptford to see this on Wednesday, and looking forward to it very much. Although I happen to think that Mount the Air is one of the best albums released this century one of the pleasures of the new Diversions project is how it strips back the arrangements to let Rachel and Becky’s voices shine.
Kaisfatdad says
Good point Gatz. When I saw them live here a couple of years back, the best moments were when the sisters sung with almost no accompaniment.
Until today, I had not realised that Molly and then Nick were born in Rangoon.
Or that she spent WW2 in New Delhi as a refugee and had a radio show with her sister, Nancy, on All India Radio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Drake
atcf says
I was also at the Brum show. A confession: I’d never got round to listening to the Unthanks, and we were there because my wife wanted to go. But 90 minutes later I was utterly won over – what a beautiful evening of music.
retropath2 says
Birmingham? Where? How did I miss this? I have yet to see the Unthanks, they being on my pail list (a small bucket for refilling on a regular basis). I have Tracey Thorns versions of some charming Molly Blake songs so I know them to be class.
Artery says
The Glee Club in Brum it was Doc.
retropath2 says
Booger: I never remember to look at their listings….
Kaisfatdad says
The Unthanks are right up your street, Retro.
How interesting that Tracey Thorn has also covered MD.
https://www.discogs.com/Tracey-Thorn-Molly-Drake-Songs/release/5611464
Two songs How wild the wind blows and Night is my friend.
Not on YT but HWTWB is on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/track/00zBFicwUkexz2vob7gHQw
Just stumbled across this illuminating interview with Gabrielle Drake. The Drakes were a seriously posh family who brought their nanny with them when they returned from Rangoon.
“Until then, life was fairly easy out east,” recalls Gabrielle, “There were lots of servants … not that I remember having a spoilt childhood. Then suddenly we were back in England and in the grips of rationing. And yet, we were lucky in a way. We came back with my nanny who knew far more about England than mummy did. I remember the two of them standing over the Aga with a recipe book trying to work out how to roast beef, that sort of thing!”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/mar/22/nick-drake-mother-molly
Wayfarer says
A lovely version, KFD. Tracey Thorn is great, isn’t she? That album is now on my “must get” list
Kaisfatdad says
While we are celebrating this wonderful band, it seems more than reasonable to go back to the first time I heard them. Here is the finest hour of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset: Robert Wyatt’s magnificent Sea Song.
No disrespect to Adrian but Belinda O’Hooley is a very fine keyboard player.
DogFacedBoy says
But with Belinda in the band it didn’t work. She’s too strong a personality and too much her own artist / woman. It was like watching two acts share the same stage walking on eggshells. Both excellent but pulling in different directions.
Kaisfatdad says
Interesting comment DFB. I never got to see the Winterset live (never played Sweden as far as I know) and that tension didnt come across on the albums. I should probably give them another listen.
Just refreshed my memory on Wiki. Originally they were an all girl band.
Lando Cakes says
Great review of a great show. I saw it in Edinburgh last week and now have the vinyl in hand to listen to – looking forwards to that.
Interesting to compare with the Tracey Thorn versions, which are quite different.
Junior Wells says
Interesting that you delayed listening to the new album in favour of hearing the songs live first.
I guess for an artist you are very familiar with I’d be ok, but, generally, I much prefer to have heard their stuff before going to a concert.
Bartleby says
Thanks for the heads-up. New album(s) duly ordered. I saw them at St George’s Bristol last year in a concert that was supposed to be released (but for some reason, wasn’t). They were spellbinding and Becky was overcome after singing “Mount the Air”. Wish I could make one of the Molly concerts.
DogFacedBoy says
Diversions 5 which I’m guessing is the symphony show is out later this year
Bartleby says
Oh goody. I thought they must have junked the idea.
DogFacedBoy says
Nope Adrian mentioned it at the gig along with a London show with orchestra to launch it
Bartleby says
Cool. Well, this was my view, standing ovation post Mount the Air:
Lando Cakes says
Well, I haven’t seen this before. Just popped the LP out of its shrink-wrap and it looks like it’s had a bite taken out of it!
Scarlet says
I have tickets for the London show at the end of the month and I’m looking forward to it even more now.
(Incidentally, I saw Belinda O’Hooley -along with Heidi – on Saturday. Mighty fine keyboard player indeed.)
Gatz says
I’m not long back from The Albany in Deptford. ‘We’ve never been to Deptford before. It’s very real isn’t it?’ Said Adrian. He later added that this and some others in the tour had been subsidised by the Arts Council to provide culture in ‘areas of low engagement’. All that happened of course was bunch of Unthanks fans travelled from elsewhere to get to it.
The music, and in particular the singing, was of course utterly beautiful, but by the end the unrelenting gloom was getting a bit too much for me, and I’m a man who tends to melancholy in art as well as life. The final Molly Drake poem, played in recorded form using the hectoring voice of daughter Gabrielle, ends its downward spiral of misery with an image about the last thin shred of hope stretched over the jagged rock of life and being destroyed. Cheers, Molly. What happened next?
So an excellent night, but I can’t say I would have wanted it to be any longer.
Mike_H says
But but but…
Didn’t it used to be Deptford Fun City? *
What happened?
I passed through Deptford on foot a few times in the very early ’90s, on my way from the former New Cross tube station to my worksite, at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Never seen so many street alkies supping Tennents all in one place (junction of Deptford Broadway and Deptford Church St.) before or since.
*I used to have a vinyl album called “What You See… Is What You Are” on Deptford Fun City records, which was 4 tracks by punksters Alternative TV on side A and 3 tracks by hippy throwbacks Here And Now on side B. Long since lost, unfortunately.
Gatz says
I saw a plug for a new restaurant, or rather a new branch of an existing restaurant, on Deptford High Street in Metro on the DLR to the gig. According to that ‘Deptford is going to be the new Peckham.’ To be honest, given how ‘real’ it was on the way there I was expecting it to be much moodier than it actually was after dark on the walk back to the station.
Anyway, the tiny gig sold out in hours at a tenner a ticket. Looking around the audience I strongly suspect it was Internet engaged Unthanks fans form all over who snapped them up, not Deptford locals saying, ‘Fancy the Unthanks at the Albany in May? They’re doing an evening of Molly Drake songs. Why yes, she was related to Nick.’