Hop Stars

RACHEL Unthank – the passionate daughter of a Geordie folk dancer – is a musical missionary.

She is determined to open our eyes to what should be a source of national pride – but which has for too long been ignored: England’s rich roots heritage.

Along with sister Rebecca, husband Adrian and the rest of her band, The Unthanks, she has acquired a name for reintroducing us to lost musical gems.

Now she is doing the same with another largely-ignored facet of our folk culture – traditional dance. Which is why she and her sister came to find themselves hopping between the beautifully manicured gardens of Bampton, in the heart of west Oxfordshire.

“Bampton is a real centre for Morris dancing,” she says. “We’d heard about it and we wanted to see what it was about. If you know anything about Morris dancing you know Bampton.”

The girls joined the village’s annual Whitsun celebrations, during which sides dance outside pubs and in the gardens of the bigger houses.

“It was great to be a part of it,” says Rachel. “It was so interesting to go into people’s gardens and see what was going on.”

The trip, which also saw her meeting Morris dancers in Northamptonshire, horn dancers in Staffordshire and the bizarrely blacked-up and skirted Britannia ‘Coco-Nutters’ in Lancashire, was turned into a BBC TV programme called Still Folk Dancing… After All These Years.

“We grew up in a clog dance group and I love finding out about other traditions,” says Rachel.

“We always think we haven’t got much of a culture compared to other countries, but there are all these odd and eccentric traditions all over Great Britain. They are rich, varied and a bit bonkers. You might not know about them, but they are there, and we want people to be aware of them.”

Now the sisters are returning to the county, not to dance with Morris men, but for a gig at The Regal, in Oxford’s Cowley Road.

The show, on March 24, follows the release of the follow-up to 2007’s Mercury-nominated album The Bairns, called, confusingly, The Last.

“I’m hoping we’re not cursing ourselves by calling it The Last,” she laughs. “It’s named after a song by Adrian, and rather than meaning ‘final’ it’s about going further and improving.”

Where as previous Unthanks records have consisted of re-imaginings of traditional songs, The Last also features contemporary tunes by the likes of King Crimson and Tom Waits.

“For me, the new album has a romantic feel,” says Rachel. “But if you look below the surface of the songs, most are pretty bleak and melancholic. I love that bittersweet element. The tune may be beautiful but the lyrics are often dark.”

Made at her snowed-in Northumberland farmhouse, and partly recorded in an old maltings and a village hall, its release tops off an amazing year for The Unthanks – with long tours of Europe and America, visits to Africa with Damon Albarn, Flea and Joan Wasser, and theatre shows with Colin Firth and Keira Knightley.

The latter were musical studies based on the lives of the country’s unsung heroes, and also featured contributions from Ben Kingsley, Laura Marling and Tom Robinson.

But it was the chance to work with Firth which got her most excited. “He was absolutely delightful,” she gushes. “He was so down to earth, and I confess I have a bit of a crush. I mean, he’s Mr Darcy!”

So what next? “Well, I’m pregnant and due to give birth at the end of May, and then there are some very exciting projects in the pipeline. But I’m not allowed to talk about those, in case they don’t happen! What is certain though, is that you haven’t heard the last of us!”

* The Unthanks play The Regal, Cowley Road, on Thursday, March 24. Get tickets from the-regal.com