MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Ill-advised turn to heritage industry
The Unthanks at Castle Armoury Drill Hall, Bury, Greater Manchester, on 17 October 2015
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ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
The Unthanks
Leeds Town Hall
BECKY Unthank is considering the parallels between her family and that of the Brontes. They’re sisters. They have bodies of work obsessed by melancholy and death. They have a lesser-known brother.
These similarities are sufficient to qualify the folk band to commemorate the 200th birthday of Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, with a song cycle based on a selection of her poems.
Commissioned by the Bronte Society, the Northumbrian outfit were invited to work and record in the Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Becky and sister Rachel used the time to walk across the moors, “pretending we were Kate Bush,” while composer Adrian McNally played Emily’s five-octave cabinet piano under the watchful eye of curators.
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