Rachel Unthank is an English rose. Not only does she sing songs of hardship, family and love that originate from her native Northumberland, she even holidays in England. It is in the Lake District where she pulls over to talk to me, except things don’t exactly get off on the right foot when she discovers I spent a year living in Whickham, Gateshead, a town close to where Unthank and her sister Becky grew up in Ryton.

“Whickham are our local rivals,” she says, in a Geordie accent that is hardly Paul Gascoigne, but is quite strong all the same, and unexpectedly charming. Indeed, we had to pool our respective charm to get over our differences.
Rachel Unthank and the Winterset consist of the two sisters, along with keyboardist Belinda O’Hooley and Jackie Oates on viola. While the nation rains acts deemed by critics ‘nu-folk’, Unthank’s group are very much old folk, and their success with a more traditional form (awarded Folk Album of the Year by Mojo in 2005, sold out tours, gushing praise from the likes of Bob Harris, Phil Jupitus and Stuart Maconie) proves it is not just the new adaptation of folk music that people are embracing – English folk music in its purest form remains in fine fettle too.

What is most stirring about the music of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, is the sense of place one gets from listening to their two albums, Cruel Sister and The Bairns. Of course, Whickham and Ryton are among the pit villages that surround Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, the mining industry giving rise to the music that stoked the creative fires of the Unthanks in their youth.

“There weren’t pits there any more as I was growing up,” said Rachel, before accidentally honking the horn on her car, “and as a physical landscape it didn’t affect me, but the music did. There are lots of great songs, lots of material that has come out of it down the ages.

“My mum and dad got into folk music with the sixties revival and stayed with it really. My dad was in a band called The Keelers, who sang shanties and local songs, and my mum was in folk choirs and things like that. Becky and I clog danced from a young age, and grew up travelling round the country clog dancing.”

It’s a far cry from a childhood idolising whoever wears number nine for Newcastle United or hanging out in the formidably enormous shopping monolith that is the Metro Centre – past times I found my peers enjoying in Whickham. But, it seems, traditional music in that area is healthier than ever, with Unthank attesting that Hexham, where she now lives, has something approaching a ‘scene’ with countless young people attending folk sessions every week, not to mention the Folk and Traditional Music degree on offer at Newcastle University which attracts a slew of talented young practitioners to the city.

Rachel Unthank is described on her website as a ‘selfless performer’, referring to the fact she interprets existing songs and stories, and does not write her own. She is, perhaps, a vehicle for these ancient tunes to reveal themselves to today’s audience. This is a wonderful duty, but does that belittle any claims at originality?
“I don’t write at all,” she said, “Belinda writes songs that we might sing, and our fiddle player writes tunes that we hope to incorporate, but I don’t know if I have that skill. There are already so many great songs and stories. I’m really interested in the stories that folk songs bring to light.

“We like to do a certain amount of material from the North East because I don’t think people in England realise how rich a heritage local areas have. I’m proud we have such a diverse culture and I want people to know about it.”
She really is a selfless performer then. The other thing is, that Rachel Unthank and the Winterset are very much a collaboration of four individual talents – “We all come to the table with songs we want to sing,” she says, and to see them in concert is to see the performance of an ensemble – Rachel is clearly not the ‘front woman’ and if anything, Becky’s vocals are exercised more than her sister’s. It seems, therefore, slightly odd that the group go by Rachel’s name.

“I didn’t want that at first,” she explains, “but Becky did, because we started off as a duo, just the two of us. When Becky was younger she wouldn’t sing without me because she was nervous. It’s my name at the front but within that everybody has their say.”

As with any set of sibling singers, the chemistry between Rachel and Becky is palpable upon seeing them perform. While they use them sparingly, the Unthanks’ harmonies are breathtaking given the right venue (The Spitz, on the 21st, in all its cosiness, should be ideal) and also fairly leftfield. Also as with any set of siblings, the relationship can be complex. In this case, however it is all very genial. To dig for creative differences is a fruitless task; a spat within Rachel Unthank and the Winterset is not to be found. The age difference between Rachel, 28, and Becky, 20, perhaps accounts for the ease of which they can work together.

“She’s very inquisitive musically,” Rachel said of her sister, “and because she is a lot younger than me, we were doing different things growing up, and for four years I was away at university. I suppose when she was a teenager she was into leftfield indie, while I was into grunge at that age. Now we pool our musical knowledge and influence each other.”

Becky is, apparently, “very independently minded”. The prospect of Becky doing her own thing one day seems real, especially given her recent maturity into her role in the group, and evident confidence when she takes lead vocals. “Maybe, maybe…” was Rachel’s response to this possibility.
But yes, in case you’d missed that, Rachel was into grunge as a teenager. It wasn’t all clog dancing and mining songs – she very much has an eye on the contemporary, and even covers songs by Robert Wyatt and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on The Bairns.

A recent performance at the Green Man Festival in Wales saw the group hypnotise the crowd with clog dancing, those time-honoured songs and the natural repartee of keyboardist O’Hooley. However, the foursome did stand out from a line-up dripping with nu-folk, psych-folk and folktronica as the most ‘trad’ thing on the bill. That’s not to say Rachel isn’t excited by the new-fangled folk experiments of her peers.

“I know more about the traditional scene, so its kind of new to me,’ she said. “We crossover into it. It’s healthy there are new takes on folk music – that’s as it should be. Folk music is supposed to be the music of the people.”
She then reels off a list of contemporary music she admires. Sufjan Stevens, Regina Spektor, Antony and the Johnsons, Lau, Alasdair Roberts…

The artist perhaps most comparable to the Unthanks, thematically anyway, is Vashti Bunyan. Bunyan’s songs both in the sixties and on her most recent album address childhood, mothering, protection and innocence – all themes of Rachel’s. Of course, The Bairns places these themes centre stage.

“We realised that a lot of our songs deal with children,” said Rachel. “Lullabies, songs about children not coming home. Children are a recurring theme, so the title felt fitting.”

Given the rude health of folk music in Northumberland, they are also clearly inspiring children to sing and play. A major city tour awaits for Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, followed by a familiar trawl of smaller towns, and maybe a trip abroad after Christmas. It all seems a world a way from Ryton, but the music will always be rooted there. You can take the girl out of Newcastle etc…

www.tourdates.co.uk/rachelunthank

Rachel Unthank and the Winterset play The Spitz on 21 September 2007.