Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

Transcendent and grounded music folded around unsentimental old, new and imaginatively borrowed stories of booze, brawls, abuse, loss, fear, infantile death, depravity and sorrow.

The Cedar is thrilled to be one of only six centers within the USA to be presenting the stunningly enchanting new act from the northern reaches of England, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, on their debut US tour in the wake of a breakout 2007 that saw them make numerous Best of lists well beyond the trad folk arena, and a prestigious 2008 Mercury Award nomination (alongside the likes of Robert Plant/Allison Krauss, Radiohead, Burial). Sub Pop recording artist Daniel Martin Moore will open.

"If Fairport Convention's recent revival of their classic Liege and Lief album was a reminder of how English traditional music was radically transformed in the 1960s, then Rachel Unthank shows how the process is still continuing. She's a singer from the north-east, with a pronounced Geordie accent. And she reworks folk songs and new songs with a style that switches between bleak, charming, and unexpectedly intense and theatrical. She gets lead billing, but her all-female band play an equally important role, matching her compelling vocals with sparse piano and fiddle, harmony work or passages that veer towards free jazz. They bring an angry, dramatic setting to a well-known piece such as I Wish, move between chilling a cappella work and instrumental experimentation on My Donald, and add sturdy new settings to Robert Wyatt's Sea Song or the chorus from Bonnie "Prince" Billy's A Minor Place. One of the folk records of the year." (review of The Bairns, The Guardian 8/24/07)