Lookaftering

It's impossible to name a favourite track on Lookaftering, but if you were ever to record the sound of being in love, 'If I Were' comes close, with a marvellous contribution from Joanna Newsom. Also, Robert Kirby's string arrangement lends a real presence to 'Same But Different'. That said, every single track is a real gem.

If you're looking for gentle, bittersweet, moving, beautiful music then I cannot recommend this record enough. It's good to have you back, Vashti.

Stylistically, this album is very similar to her first, 1970's Just Another Diamond Day, with the emphasis on stripped-down arrangements, often building around an acoustic guitar or piano, with Vashti's warming vocals telling tales of travellers and the simple life, with a great sense of poetry and evocation. All of the songs are beautifully composed and performed with wilting arrangements that accompany the lyrical sentiments and vocal delivery perfectly.. establishing and sustaining an elegant, regal and pastoral mood that flows beautifully from song to song. Like all great songwriters/performers, Vashti is able to conjure up images within our minds, whilst simultaneously mining heartfelt emotions that not only convey her own state of mind, but also, give the listener a sense of something to relate to. You only have to listen to a song as beautiful as Hidden or Against the Sky or Feet of Clay (or the whole album for that matter), with those delicate transcendent arrangements, coupled with that gorgeous, ethereal voice, and we're drifting off into another time and another place completely.

Despite collaborations with avant-garde folk-acts like Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and the Animal Collective, this is very much a folk-album in the traditional sense, with shorter songs that maintain a gentle tempo, with the emphasis on voice and maybe one or two different instruments. It's all the better for it too, if you ask me (not that you have, or would, but anyway), with the simplicity of the songs, coupled with the emotional-impact that Vashti's voice naturally has, really making the whole thing resonate to a much greater degree.

There's no definite highlight to pick out (though right now, if I was forced, I might say Hidden), with the whole album just unfolding perfectly. As a performer and storyteller, Bunyan is fantastic, and despite the three-decades worth of inactivity, her influence, particularly on the aforementioned Banhart and Newsom, et al, is monumental. Lookingafter, like it's 1970 predecessor Just Another Diamond Day, is a magnificent album... one that seems to exist in it's own hermetically sealed universe. The song writing, production, performance and overall arrangement is fantastic, and sure to appeal to both fans of the traditional folk of singer songwriters like Roy Harper, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, early Bob Dylan, Christy Moore and Van Morrison (think Veedon Fleece!) and those forward-thinking up-starts currently taking folk music into strange and intoxicating new places. Vashti Bunyan's Lookingafter manages to bridge the gap between the two generations perfectly, no doubt becoming something of a folk-musical "gateway drug" for many listeners drawn to this great new movement.