Vashti Bunyan’s Lookaftering – Expanded Edition, a re-issue of her beautiful second album, is out now via the Brighton-based Fat Cat Records.
Alongside the original studio album, the expanded edition features a second LP/disc of demos recorded from 2001-2005, an alternate take and a live performance recording. The expanded edition sees Vashti accompany herself on electric and acoustic guitar and experiment with piano, strings, harmonium, pipe organ, recorders and accordion. The end result is sublime.
20 years since the first release of the album, the expanded edition’s 2xLP gatefold double album has reflective sleeve notes from Vashti as well as producer Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, and FatCat’s Dave Howell. Fans of Vashti will also be delighted by the 16 page lyric booklet and collection of lyric-inspired paintings by Vashti’s daughter Whyn Lewis.
As you’d expect from a singer like Vashti Bunyan, even the design has its own magical intimacy and artistry. Of the time creating Lookaftering in 2005 Max Richter recalls,
“It felt like a community project; a family of people coming together.”
The story of Vashti Bunyan is itself almost mythical. Her stunning debut album, Just Another Diamond Day, was released in 1970 and documented her adventures as she travelled 260 miles from London to Skye…via horse and wagon. As you’d imagine, Vashti and her similarly long-haired travelling partner received plenty of attention on their journey. However, the album itself received very little recognition till a CD reissue in 2000 propelled the previously out of print album to finally reach the acclaim it deserved.
The art school dropout turned musician is a well-loved cliche but Vashti took it one step further and was expelled from art school in 1964 for focusing too much on her music. Bunyan has previously talked about her frustration at being given songs penned by the Rolling Stones to record when she was in her early 20s stating “I didn’t want to record one of their songs, I wanted to record my songs”. Lookaftering – Expanded Edition shows just how wonderful it is when Vashti does exactly that.
The previously unreleased demos on Lookaftering – Expanded Edition are stripped back and open. Demo version of tracks like ‘Here Before’ and ‘If I Were’ are so intimate and immediate in their layering you can almost see Vashti sat building them. These tracks show Bunyan’s music at its best with a raw purity that reminds the listener of Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom (who recorded on the album) and Judee Sill. Vashti’s Live at The Echo rendition of ‘Lately’ is enough to make you weep.
Vashti wrote of her album reissue,
“The beautiful photograph of Max in the studio playing wine glasses with his young daughter’s violin bow, brings it all back to me – how very fortunate I have been.”
How very fortunate we are to have these demos.
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