A thousand thank yous

Four albums in, and The Unthanks have really hit their stride. Anyone who's heard Here's the Tender Coming, their 2009 spine-tingler, will recognise those filigree sibling harmonies and pastoral themes, but Lastpushes this Geordie family affair onto higher plains with some of the most sublime orchestrations this side of a Gavin Bryars recording.

There's a gargantuan space and maturity to Last, whose title track is at the heart of the affair. "Man should be the soul of his/story", Rachel and Becky Unthank intone, the play on words uniting them with the song's at once cavernous and spare piano lines.

The song takes the pulse of the entire collection, a meditation on the ephemeral quality of daily existence, with a dark undertow tugging at the daily imperfections that sunder and repair relationships.

Becky, the younger of the Unthank sisters, possesses a voice that’s laden with strangulated heartbreak, as if her cries for emotional release have been garrotted by a force much greater than anything she can muster. Weaving in and around her sister Rachel’s vocals, the siblings elevate interpretation to another level, where age-old stories inherit intense relevance to their present-day setting.

No One Knows I'm Gonesheds a sliver of light on man's blithe indifference to his world through the pinprick arrangements of Adrian McNally, producer, arranger, pianist and all- round Unthanks linchpin. Medieval linguistic references suggest a time long lost, but The Unthanks haul them, not so much kicking and screaming as raucously rollicking into the 21st century.

The drop-dead opening track, Gan to the Kye, and the a-capella opening lines of Canny Hobbie Elliotwill have folk-wannabes scuttling to replicate the elusive sound that's surely the sole copyright of The Unthanks by now.

Arrangements throughout Lastare faithful to the songs' folk roots while remaining utterly unpredictable, with surprises around every hairpin bend. At times the use of horns even suggests a highly unlikely kinship with Zach Condon and his band Beirut.

All round magnificence, without a sugar coating in sight. See the-unthanks.com

Download tracks: Gan to the Kye, Last