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No one else really sounds like this band. Which is pretty rare. The title track of Last by McNally, is a wonderful ex&le of something that sounds like it wasnt written but just appeared. On first hearing you think you must have heard it before, that it always existed, but you cant put your finger on it. Its playful and profound, a hymn to us all getting our mess together and getting on with the business of being alive. A beautiful, unsettling, wildly romantic record. Martin Freeman Originally released and licensed to EMI in 2011, Last is now reissued on RabbleRouser Music, and on vinyl for the first time. Includes Gan To The Kye – Queen of Hearts – Last – Starless The Unthanks seem to regard folk music the same way Miles Davis regarded jazz as a launchpad for exploring the wider possibilities.. a bleakly beautiful record – Uncut … mystifying and devastating – Pitchfork … When the latest pop fad fades from view, The Unthanks music will continue to resonate down through the generations… This is music that will last. And that perhaps is precisely the point that the ambiguous album title is getting at. Ben Myers, The Quietus … This is a big album in every way – Mojo … sparse, intensely focussed production and some stunningly imaginative, minimaliststyle arrangements..the strings have an icy, autumnal countenance about them, and it’ s against their chilled and often foreboding presence that the voices of Rachel and Becky radiate warmth and compassion… their ability to pare back extraneous matter and to stare unflinchingly into the very soul of a song makes Last such a spellbinding experience BBC Music … their fourth and best album.. bewitching and hugely ambitious Q Magazine … gorgeously unhurried, utterly mesmerising masterpiece. Sunday Express … quietly subverting English folk music.. proves the mix of Rachel and Becky’ s voices to be one of the true wonders of 21stcentury music 810 NME … Just beautiful Lauren Laverne … stringladen and luscious but also delicate, wistful and melancholy The Telegraph In 2010, The Unthanks seemed to be diversifying – a visit to Africa with Damon Albarn, Flea and Joan Wasser, exploratory concerts of music by Robert Wyatt and Antony & The Johnsons, collaborations with conductor Charles Hazelwood, Adrian Utley Portishead, presenting TV programmes for BBC4, theatre shows with Colin Firth and Keira Knightley, long European and American tours, and Rachel Unthank expecting a first child with husband and band mate Adrian McNally… yet all along they were plotting and making their most ambitious music to date. Last was their most expansive and expensive sounding record to date, yet it was made for next to nothing, using a combination of a Northumberland village hall, the snow covered farmhouse home of Rachel and Adrian, and a Victorian concert hall in Suffolk, where McNally wrote the title track. The Unthanks continued their predilection for unlikely covers, with interpretations of King Crimsons Starless, a Tom Waits song, and a song covered to ch&ion the unheralded British songwriter Jon Redfern. 180g double vinyl with 12 page booklet including lyrics, a new foreword from Martin Freeman, original sleeve notes and extra images.

Mostly what I loved was the sound of ambition, a band who wants to push their chosen genre as far as it will go without ripping the fabric. The Unthanks music is about everything sad, all the losses you have ever felt, all at once. Its an English blues, with a spiritually redemptive quality that only those who love and honour music would be able to uncover. Heres The Tender Coming is, at the time of writing, nearly fifteen years old, but its beauty will make you ache for the rest of your life. Great music is great music, whatever genre it might once have been. Excerpt from new foreword by Nick Hornby Originally released and licensed to EMI in 2009, Here’ s The Tender Coming is now reissued on RabbleRouser Music, and on vinyl for the first time. Includes The Testimony Of Patience Kershaw – Lucky Gilchrist – Annachie Gordon – Here’ s The Tender Coming Mojo Magazine Folk Album Of The Year … Top 50 Albums Of The Year, The Guardian and Uncut … Even more satisfying, compelling and varied than the Mercurynominated The Bairns. Haunting, original and magnificent The Guardian … When confronted with music as splendid as this, it’ s easy to be swept along on a wave of purple prose. Beautiful, haunting, and beguiling are all words that spring easily to mind whilst listening to this astonishing record..even such effusive descriptions drastically undersell BBC Music Reviews … My favorite county record of 2009. The county of Northumberland, that is. The supernatural singing from Rachel and Becky Unthank and the lovely arrangements are three reasons to hear this wonderful album. Elvis Costello … an exquisite mixture of light and dark, instinct and artistry Uncut … ..a rare, undisciplined magic..this is another formidable work – fRoots … Absolutely exquisite. A real work of art. I will be playing it at least forever Paul Morley Following on from their Mercury Prize nomination, Rachel and Becky returned with a name tweak The Unthanks, revised lineup and a brand new album that rested not one jot on the sound that earned them the only British folk entry in The Guardians and Uncuts Albums of the Decade. The album earned the band their first appearance on Later With Jools Holland, and they toured it across the world. Having produced and arranged much of the first two albums, Adrian McNally finally took to the piano stool, allowing Stef Conner to return to finish the final year of her PHD, having kept her studies going while playing over 100 shows in the shoes of departed Winterset member Belinda O’ Hooley. 180g double vinyl with 12 page booklet including lyrics, a new foreword from Nick Hornby, original sleeve notes and extra images.