In a most welcome comeback, cult ‘60’s singer and songwriter Vashti Bunyan released her second full-length album in 2005 after a 35 year hiatus. After her first LP Just Another Diamond Day went largely unnoticed upon its release in 1970, a disheartened Bunyan left the city lights and the music industry behind to raise her children in rural Scotland and Ireland.
While she was away her album gradually become respected as a forgotten classic by music lovers and record collectors alike, and after the re-release of Diamond Day in 2000 Vashti has been quick to cement her standing in the burgeoning American “nu-folk” scene.
Vashti and Devendra
After taking the first few tentative steps by appearing as a guest on Devendra Banhart’s album Joy in the Hands, as well as on the charming Prospect Hammer EP by the Animal Collective, she has stepped out of the shadows with an album of indescribable beauty.
Vashti Bunyan’s renaissance is not unlike the folk revival of the 1960’s, spearheaded by Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, when pre-war blues men like Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James were brought back from relative obscurity to perform in front of a new younger audience. However whereas they just reworked old material,Vashti has created a record which shows she is still a unique and vital voice in today’s musical landscape.
Lookaftering- The Album
Straight from the very beginning it is clear that Lookaftering has the same elegantance as Diamond Day. Vashti’s vocals have not lost an ounce of their delicate beauty and the song writing too has lost none of the innocent pastoral vision, which made its predecessor so renowned.
The production and orchestration by Max Richter are as appropriately complimentary to Vashti as Joe Boyd’s were back in 1970. The use of strings and woodwind serve to emphasise subtly her musical vision and are never intrusive or swamping of her fragile vocals. Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Adam Pierce make notable instrumental contributions to the record, but their appearances do not detract from Vashti being centre stage.
The songs themselves seem to look back upon the past with a sense of longing, a reflection on the dreams of Diamond Day and upon the ceaseless progression of time. “Here Before” is an ode to the mysteries of parenthood, while on “Against the Sky” she portrays a a yokel trapped in the city pinning for her old farmstead.
Such nostalgia might seem to veer towards mere sentimentality, but Bunyan never dwells too long on wistful thinking. There is no regret in these songs, just an acceptance of life on its own terms. This adds to the timeless quality of a simply stunningly crafted second album.
