Onward We Go, ‘Lookaftering’ Into What Lies Ahead With Vashti Bunyan

Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Lookaftering’ turns twenty this year, and Vashti turns eighty. To celebrate, Bunyan, via FatCat Records, has gifted us ‘Lookaftering – Expanded Edition’, a reissue of her legendary second album, extended to include a second disc of demos, an alternative take, and a live performance recording, plus reflective liner notes from Vashti herself, the album’s producer Max Richter, and more.

‘Lookaftering’ is a tender, masterful collection of psychedelic folk, made beautiful by fragile, intimate vocals and unadorned lyrics, and made wonderfully strange by eerie, almost medieval sounding melodies. 

With this expanded edition, singer-songwriter Bunyan bares all, giving us an entirely unabashed glimpse behind the curtain into her process. Being able to listen to the two in conjunction with one another, with the inclusion of the original demos alongside the finished studio album, reveals a fascinating evolution. The original demos are very pared back, just Vashti alone at home, accompanying herself, and very much feel like a tentative foray back into the world of music. This was a world that had changed greatly in the 35 years since the recording of her first album, and a world that she had barely been a part of at that time, releasing ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ and then almost immediately retreating from the limelight.

We hear these simple demos transformed through collaboration, from Devendra Banhart’s steel guitar on ‘Wayward’, to Adam Pierce’s hammer dulcimer on ‘Turning Backs’, Joanna Newsom’s harp on ‘Against the Sky’, to Richter “playing wine-glasses, having borrowed his small daughter’s violin bow”, and get a true sense of what Richter means when he reflects that the making of this album “felt like a community project; a family of people coming together”. The careful intention and deep connection between the songs and their contributors is apparent, as is Richter’s skill in preserving Bunyan’s voice when transforming the demos into these fully realised things: his beautifully simple arrangements are entirely unselfish, content to blend into the background and complement, rather than compete with, the perfect frailty of Bunyan’s voice.

As implied by its title, ‘Lookaftering’ is an exercise in nostalgia. In ‘Wayward’, Bunyan sings of “Days going by in clouds of flour and white washing”, and wanting “to be the one / With road dust on my boots”, looking back sadly but fondly at times gone by, and longing for times that never quite were. Bunyan speaks to that sadness in all of us, a part that forever wonders about what might have been.

Elsewhere, Bunyan’s lyrics are similarly simple but poignant, singing of love in unfettered terms. In ‘If I Were’, she sings “Will I always look / for your beautiful face / In every crowd / every place”: the songs are not flashy or melodramatic, instead, Bunyan sits in those in-between moments of quietly loving, simply and comfortably, like bringing someone a coffee in bed.

The expanded release of the album also includes a beautiful rendition of ‘Lately’, live at The Echo in Los Angeles. This recording is rare, and wonderfully intimate: you can hear the smile in Bunyan’s voice as she sings, and what sounds like a little nervous laugh in that brief moment between the song ending, and the applause beginning.

In the context of Bunyan’s slim discography, and an entirely atypical musical career, additions such as these are made infinitely more precious. So together we say, thank you Vashti for this album, and happy birthday!

Gracie Ashpole

@gracieashpole

Image: 'Lookaftering' Official Album Cover

 

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