Mount the air

"Like its predecessor, Mount the Air is a dark storeroom of soft, piano-led balladry peppered with tasteful flourishes of upright bass, soft brush work, and spectral horns and strings, but it's also a far more ambitious outing, sporting two epic ten-minute pieces that flirt with experimental ambient pop grandeur".

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"This is a return to the gentle melancholia of Last, and while there are fine vocals from the Unthank sisters, the dominant figure is Rachel's husband, Adrian McNally, who plays keyboards and percussion, and produced and wrote much of the music. The album starts with the lengthy title track, in which a traditional melody is matched with an elaborate wash of piano, strings and drifting, jazz-influenced trumpet work from Tom Arthurs, before building to a gently epic finale. From there on in, the mood rarely alters. It's a lush, often exquisite set".

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"Whatever else you say about The Unthanks you can't accuse them of doing the obvious or taking the easy route. Having spent the intervening time engaged in diversionary tactics with the Rober Wyatt/Antony & The Johnsons, shipyard songs and brass band albums, they march back into the front line with their first studio album in four years. It is expansive - boldly expansive - painstakingly arranged with a big string sound and an array of slow burning songs that creep up on you in a welter of studied atmosphere ... [The album] is geared very much to the breathy vocals of Becky Unthank with plenty of forlorn intensity, its fragile beauty heavily loaded with tension and brooding darkness ... The Unthanks have always played by their own rules, but the leap they've taken here is formidable even by their standards. A serious work that merits serious attention".