VASHTI BUNYAN!

So I’m sitting at my desk at work the other day, and a passing co-worker asks me “hey, you know about music, d’you know what the song on the new Orange advert is?”, and I say “um, no sorry, I don’t really watch many adverts, er…”. It’s a familiar scenario, and a good demonstration of why I tend not to really trumpet my musical obsessions when not in the company of personal friends. So she moves on to somebody else, asking the same question, and this time she comes up with some of the lyrics from the song. At which point I say, “gosh, actually I do know that one! That’s a Joanna Newsom song that is!”

(I can’t be bothered to go through all the hoo-ha about music I like ending up in adverts again. Ad people tend to be quite young and sharp and like trendy, magazine-approved music. Sometimes trendy, magazine-approved music is quite good and I like it too. And often the people who make it are not adverse to a bit of cash and some wider exposure. Thus it ends up on adverts. Shrug. The end.)

So anyway, the next day the same co-worker lady comes in and says “thanks for identifying that music for me, I ordered the CD last night. And guess what, I was listening to Radio 2, and they were interviewing Joanna Newsom! And she was talking about this woman Vashti Bunyan who sounded ever so good, so I ordered her CD too!”.

Blimey. So via the strange machinations of media, advertising and word of mouth, this lady whose musical taste (no elitest sneering intended here) usually runs the gamut from The Best of the ‘70s to the Lighthouse Family now gets a crash course in the luminaries of the acid-folk scene. My initial thought is that I hope she doesn’t hate them and blame me. Thankfully though, she seems quite pleased with her purchases, and graciously offered to lend me the Vashti Bunyan album.

So then – a short history for the uninitiated (by which I basically mean those who’ve missed all the recent indie-media blah blah): Vashti Bunyan is a British folk singer who released a sole album – ‘Another Diamond Day’ - in 1971 and subsequently gave up music and disappeared off the map. In the intervening years her record has become something of a collector’s holy grail and built up a killer rep as a classic of British psychedelic folk, finally getting a CD reissue a couple of years ago. Fast forward to the present day and Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom have made weirdy folk albums, gotten unaccountably famous and enthusiastically talked up Vashti as their favouritest person in the whole world. Heartened by this, she’s emerged from the wilderness (or rather, from her idyllic sounding family life in rural Scotland), collaborated with Banhart and the Animal Collective, and recorded a new album.

And here it is in my hands. It’s called ‘Lookaftering’ and it has a rather lovely picture of a rabbit on the front. Aesthetically speaking, you can’t really go wrong with folk music + rabbits, can you? Gives things a good Watership Down kinda feel. It’s a bit like heavy metal and goats. But anyway, let’s give the damn thing a listen shall we?

Having not heard anything from Vashti’s ‘classic’ album, I’m unsure of what to expect here really, and I’m a little apprehensive. Given the Devendra connection, could I be walking into a big load of squeaky voiced children’s hour whimsy or hippy kitsch overload? Or on the other hand, over 30 years since her hippie-folk bubble burst, could we be in for little more than some nice but unremarkable middle-aged singer-songwritering?

Well as it turns out I’m forced to eat my apprehensive hat and offer Mr. Banhart a profound apology within the first minute – this is fucking astonishing stuff.

Vashti’s voice, guitar arrangements and sense of melody are so wordlessly beautiful that... well, I don’t think I have any words for it. If her older album is half as good as this, I can completely understand its exalted position amongst younger folkie types. I feel like I’ve just stumbled upon the motherlode.

Sounding like it could have been recorded any time in the past four decades, ‘Lookaftering’ is a pure-hearted and evocative British folk record in the classic tradition. A universe away from the jarring quirkiness of her aforementioned American disciples, Vashti sounds as if she’s broadcasting from the kind of beautiful, utilitarian, nature-worshipping paradise dreamt of by William Morris, hermetically sealed away from the mire of human failings and the soul destroying shit of modernity. At different moments, she puts me in mind of Sandy Denny on Fairport’s ‘Fotheringay’, Shirley Collins (inevitably), the dream-pop utopia of Mazzy Star (that’ll be courtesy of Max Richter’s lavish production job) and the quiet stoner majesty of Cat Power’s ‘Covers Record’. Not to mention gentle lashings of that elusive ‘Wicker Man’ vibe.

It’s difficult to discuss what I love about this kind of folk music without resorting to cliché (see above paragraph), but what it basically comes down to is... the strange, fleeting imagery and indefinable feelings it evokes in me, funny nameless sensations the origin of which I don’t really know, and which I can rarely access any other way. And Vashti’s album gives me such a direct line to that stuff it makes me shiver. Sorry to go all ‘Pseud’s Corner’ on you there, but that’s the only way I can explain it. Maybe it’s because I’m basically English and grew up in the countryside with all that that entails, or maybe it’s even some weird folk memory yearning, but whatever – in a subtle, subliminal sort of way, this music gives me glimpses of things I’ve forgotten, or never knew in the first place, and takes me to a very good place indeed.

For Vashti Bunyan to have suddenly returned with a record this strong and assured after spending three decades not playing any music is an absolutely staggering achievement, and testament to the reality and uniqueness of her talent, which clearly goes a lot deeper than mere record collector hype and trendy folk-revivalism.