British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan is celebrating her 80th birthday with a new edition of her 2005 record ‘Lookaftering’, including added demos, live versions and sleeve notes from its producer, Max Richter. The lyric booklet features paintings by Bunyan’s daughter, which beautifully brings to life the wistful, dreamy tracks. Robert Bounds sits down with Vashti Bunyan to discuss the cult reception to her work and how a new generation breathed new life into her music. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to Monocle on Culture.
I'm Robert Bounds.
A soft,
gauzy aura seems to have descended on Monocle Radio Studios this week
as we have been graced with a visit from the music legend Vashti Bunyan.
The English singer songwriter has had a, well, meandering path to success.
On paper, what Vashti did In the late 1960s sounds the ultimate hippie dream.
A young female songwriter leaves London for the Outer Hebrides with her boyfriend,
traveling in a wagon drawn by a black horse named Beth.
The 650 mile trip takes two years.
She makes an album about it, Just Another Diamond Day,
a collection of gentle pastoral songs about living in and journeying through nature.
Producer Joe Boyd, who'd go on to work with Nick Drake and many others,
captured a sense of elegiac wonder, as if Vashti was listing the qualities of a disappearing world.
And really, she was.
But Diamond Day was overlooked at the time of its release.
What's that about being ahead of your time?
Well, it was later rediscovered by new generation, decades later,
and it's now considered by many as one of the definitive works of British folk and was a huge inspiration in the US too.
Vashti's ethereal voice and delicate melodies have since captivated listeners,