Celtic Connections: Lady Maisery and the Unthanks
Glasgow City Halls - 03/02/23
Both Lady Maisery and the Unthanks are acts that are capable of conjuring windows to a folk past that open out on to dimly discernible worlds of shadows and pale sunlight, half-forgotten lives lived by people whose worldview is all but lost to us, except in song. The past not so much a foreign country as another universe.
Lady Maisery, a trio of Rowan Rheingans, Hannah James and Hazel Askew, do this with rather fewer forces than the Unthanks, creating sparse soundscapes with banjo, melodeon, harp, fiddle, thumb piano and especially their voices deployed in unison and in harmony. On this occasion, and with a new album to promote, the folk tradition was there as a whisper in the background, an ever-present sensibility, as they mostly sang songs of their own composition, along with carefully chosen items from Björk, Lal Waterson (an unaccompanied tour de force) and Tracy Chapman, the latter ending climactically in a cry of rage against violence on women. Rooted in a tradition they clearly love, Lady Maisery make intelligent sophisticated music, the sophistication coming from nicely judged, interlocking simplicities.
The Unthanks, sisters Rachel and Becky, took the stage with a mighty song, ‘The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry’, their nine-piece band, including a string quartet, creating dense textures that brought out the full drama of the piece. Startling lighting effects reinforced the idea that storytelling and drama are a large part of what the Unthanks are about, but it’s the uncanny blend of their sibling voices that is the centrepiece of their best work. They have a unique tonal quality that gives their songs something of the nature of those dreams that lie just out of the reach of memory when you wake in the morning.
They allowed the audience to give voice on occasion too, particularly on their current album’s title track ‘Sorrows Away’, a festival sing-around favourite which bookended a sea shanty with a beautiful coda from the quartet’s viola. Other favourites that would have been familiar to folk club audiences throughout the land were Dave Sudbury’s emblem of hope, ‘The King of Rome’, the tale of the return of an errant pigeon, and ‘The Testament of Patience Kershaw’ about the indignities of a young woman indentured to a 19th century coal mine. Like Lady Maisery they looked to left field for some of their repertoire, with Anthony and the Johnsons’ ‘Bird Girl’ picking up on the ornithological theme and pushing Becky’s voice to its technical limits.
A crack band, with trumpeter Lizzie Jones adding notably to the mix, buoyed those marvellous voices, which impressively did not falter even after an extended bout of clog-dancing. They all contributed to an evening which showcased just some of the creative possibilities in the broad arc of the English folk tradition.