One can only admire how the Tyneside group have evolved from their English folk roots to become a cultural phenomenon, charting Northumbrian history from navy press gangs to shipbuilding glory and destitution. Along the way, they have embraced songs by <person>Robert Wyatt</person> and <person>Molly Drake</person>, and added a keen strain of chamber folk to the tender vocal harmonies of <person>Unthank</person> sisters <person>Rachel</person> and <person>Becky</person>. National treasures? Absolutely.
Lines is a trilogy of short albums (available singly or as a set) that maintain their ambition, respectively focused on the poems of <person>Emily Brontë</person>, those of first world war writers, and a Maxine Peake drama celebrating Hull fishworker and campaigner <person>Lillian Bilocca</person>.
The <person>Brontë</person> set is the obvious headliner, setting <person>Emily</person>’s poems to music and recording them at the <person>Brontës</person>’ parsonage home using their regency piano. It’s haunting – <person>Emily</person> seems half in love with easeful death – but less resonant than its companions. The Sea Is a Woman, with lyrics by <person>Peake</person>, has <person>Rachel Unthank</person> at her most poignant. The first world war set features singer <person>Sam Lee</person> and a string accompaniment for a Siegfried Sassoon poem. The piano arrangements of <person>Adrian McNally</person> sometimes fly, sometimes plod, but the ethereal sibling harmonies rarely falter.