Paul Smith and Rachel Unthank give a captivating performance of their album Nowhere and Everywhere for an unforgettable celebration of all things folk.
It was a stunned crowd that filed out of Jimmy’s Liverpool on March 29th after a staggering performance from Unthank:Smith as part of their first UK and Ireland tour. The collaboration, made up of Rachel Unthank of trad folk sister duo The Unthanks and Maximo Park’s Paul Smith, recorded Nowhere and Everywhere five years before its release this February, and it was long overdue its maiden voyage.
The basement of Liverpool bar Jimmy’s, a cosy space warmed by the red hue of the walls and lighting, is murmuring with musings over the evening to come. It’s the perfect spot for the occasion, the small space and low ceilings fostering a natural intimacy between performer and audience. The collaboration, bringing musical worlds together, appears to have also brought fans together, with the crowd an apparent mix of Unthanks, Maximo Park and Unthank:Smith fans.
Support from Alex Rex, project of Alex Nielson who features on Nowhere and Everywhere, kicks things off nicely with hints of the chaotic free jazz drumming and drone guitar we hear on the record coupled with Nielson’s introspective lyrical self-depreciation (‘Are we cowarding again?’ he asks band member Rory before performing the second of his self-admitted ‘coward songs’). Nielson is an impressive frontman and warms the audience up with light-hearted chat and audience interaction; he even gets a laugh for his scouse impersonation.
Unthank and Smith enter the stage to excited cheers from the audience, and opener Captain Bover lets us know we’re in safe hands, the boldly unaccompanied track providing a bravely intimate start to the evening. Nowhere and Everywhere hinges upon the rawness of the two voices as they come together, and this is all the more powerful in a live setting, the cavernous tones of Paul Smith’s voice snaking effortlessly around the sweet silkiness of Unthanks’. Their live vocals hold a richness unmatched by anything you can hear recorded, the vulnerability of their unaccompanied voices seeping through the room.
Faye Macalman (clarinet) and Alex Rex members Alex and Rory rejoin the stage for The Natural Urge, culminating in a stunning cacophony which revitalises the crowd after two quieter opening tracks and filling the room with the simultaneously discordant and harmonious sounds of the amalgamation of their instruments. This is clearly a friendship group as well as a musical group, and the synergy between the five musicians spreads throughout the audience for a real moment of coming together.
The pair spoke of their friendship during an interview with me before the show; ‘We’re good chatters,’ Unthank told me, to which Smith added, ‘if you’re gonna sing together you’ve got to feel comfortable with each other’, and their onstage chemistry is testament to this. Where uncomfortable guitar-tuning silences might have been, the pair starts chatting or telling, as dubbed by Unthank, ‘Geordie-jokes’ which land (much to her apparent surprise) quite well in this non-Geordie turf. Aside from functioning as useful silence fillers (Smith jokes about compensating for a lack of musical substance with chat), these intermittent natterings are essential for an album all about storytelling. The pair become narrators for the evening, sweeping us away from Liverpool’s city centre and welcoming us to the North East, weaving a tapestry of stories and myths as they guide us through the origins of each song. ‘My love of folk song really comes through my love of storytelling and connecting with audiences through stories’, Unthank tells me before the gig, and the sight of the both of them on stage, thriving off the exchange of these old tales, makes clear the extent of this love. Unthank and Smith are here to tell us stories, and the silent stillness which drowns Jimmy’s basement showed that we were here to listen.
This is never more apparent than in songs such as Robert Kay, which Smith dedicates an almost five-minute introduction to (much longer than the song itself, he jokes), detailing the tragic history behind the song and making the following listening experience a moment of poignant reflection for the audience. At times it feels less like a performance and more like a conversation between them and us, with them talking and us hanging on to their every word. They close with the epic ballad Lord Bateman, and the inevitable shouts of ‘more’ from the audience welcome the pair back to the stage for the humble a capella album closer, The King.
This moment of quiet is soon broken with the welcoming of the whole band back on stage for the last hurrah, a hurrah in the form of Richard and Linda Thompson’s I want to see the bright lights tonight, a moment of euphoric, shameless folk rockiness which the audience embrace with all their might. They admit whilst introducing this one that they’re ‘only having a bit of fun’ here, and that’s exactly how the evening ends, with a joyful, spirited, celebratory bit of fun.
The harsh juxtaposition of the outside world as we leave the venue is a testament to the escapism and solace Unthank and Smith provided where, for a couple of hours, the world ground to a halt as we were taken on a journey of stories and myths. I only hope they keep telling them.
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