Rachel Unthank & The Winterset

From the darkest fireside singalong comes the new sound of English folk.

Lilting, gothic tales of violence and despair punctuated by the languid tapping of a high-heeled shoe, a scratchy fiddle or music-hall piano, and little else: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset create complex yet sparse music from the raw song material of their northeastern England home. But don’t let its timeless appearance fool you. On The Bairns, 29-year-old Rachel, sister Becky, pianist Belinda O’Hooley and fiddler Niopha Keegan wed the studio know-how of the weird-folk revival (Joanna Newsom, etc.) to the uncompromising songs of their home’s mine-pocked landscape. Few previous recordings could prepare one for the harsh beauty of “Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk,” or the chest-clutching implication of modernity in “Fareweel Regality.” Unthank & Co. effortlessly bring the “frost and fire” of a dark winter’s pub session into the modern studio without draining the power from these oft-ancient songs. And for that accomplishment, The Bairns could scarce be considered less than a milestone in English folk music.