Product Description

Second album, following 2005's 'Cruel Sister', from cult Northumbrian all-female folk quartet, which found itself in many critics' lists as one of the best albums of 2007 and is nominated for the 2008 Mercury Prize. Bewitching, haunting and melancholy, the album absorbs and transcends the folk idiom, its mostly beatless songs buoyed and given an almost classical beauty by the plangent strings of the Northern Sinfonia.

Track Listing

1. Felton Lonnin
2. Lull I
3. Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk
4. I Wish
5. Blue's Gaen Oot O'the Fashion
6. Lull II (My Lad's A Canny Lad)
7. Blackbird
8. Lull III (A Minor Place)
9. Sea Song
10. Whitethorn
11. Lull IV (Can't Stop It Raining)
12. My Donald
13. Ma Bonny Lad
14. Fareweel Regality
15. Newcastle Lullaby

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235 in Music
• Released on: 2007-08-20
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Samaritans album of the year !
After hearing a lot of good things about Rachel Unthank in the press and catching a couple of promising sounding tracks on Mike Harding's Folk on 2, I was looking forward to hearing The Bairns in its entirety.
As the finishing bars melted away, I had already lost the will to live and was furiously trying to remember how to fashion a hangman's knot !
This is really, really depressing album. Like June Tabor, Rachel U has a melancholic voice which is perfect for the moody,tragedy of the her songs' subject matter.
Of course death,lost love and regret are stock in trade in Folk music. Unfortunately,Rachel's interpretations makes a traditional mournful ballad like say 'Little Musgrave' delivered by someone like Martin Simpson sound like Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by comparison!
So many tracks sound like real dirges with a gloomy single piano chord counterpointing the dreary vocals.
On one or two tracks where The Winterset chip in, there is the suggestion of something rather more uplifting behind the misery but regretably, these tracks are totally overwhelmed by that bloody plodding piano chord and that lifeless Geordie voice.
Am I being unfair ? Possibly,as someone who is more a fan of what is now termed 'Nu-Folk', the finger in yer ear traditional stuff quite often leaves me cold. The Bairns is very much in the conservative tradition.

If people think The Smiths were miserablists then Rachel Unthank makes them sound like a Caribbean steel drum band playing Black Lace's greatest hits !

Stunningly beautiful
"So we'll cry 'fareweel Regality',
and we'll cry 'fareweel the Liberty',
to honest friends' civility,
to winter's frost and fire"

I brought this album having caught the above snippet of "Fareweel Regality" [Sic.] playing late at night on the Radio. After a deft internet search through songs played that night, I managed to track the song down as coming from this album. Whilst I am quite a folk fan, I'd not heard of Rachel Unthank and The Winterset (fantastic name for a band!) before and so I procured the album. Whilst "Fareweel Regality" is still my favourite track, the entire album is absolutely beautiful. The voices, lyrics, tunes and arrangements are all superb - highly recommended!

Feeling Depressed? Buy This And Feel Worse!!
Having bought the previous album and found it patchy I bought this and found
it even patchier! To my ears, there're 3 great tracks and the rest are
dirges. Life is depressing enough without having musical accompaniment!
I'd love to hear Rachel Unthank address some uplifting tunes!