Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering Expanded Edition

Celebrating 20 years of Vashti Bunyan's Lookaftering

Gatefold edition features the original studio album

Plus a second LP with live, alternative and demo versions of the original album tracks

Includes photographs, sleeve notes, and a 16-page lyric booklet with paintings by Vashti's daughter, Whyn Lewis

Vashti Bunyan's story tells of the thwarted promise of early fame, disenchantment, long-term exile and eventual rediscovery. In the mid-'60s, after quitting art school to concentrate on music, she was discovered by The Rolling Stones' guru, Andrew Loog Oldham, signed to Decca and recorded a single written by Jagger/Richards.

Reviews touted her as "the new Marianne Faithful" or the "female Bob Dylan," yet further singles remained unreleased, leading to a sense of despair and a rejection of the music industry. She resurfaced in 1969 to record Just Another Diamond Day, but it went relatively unheard. Frustrated again, Bunyan withdrew from music. But Just Another Diamond Day was reissued in 2000 to tremendous acclaim.

In 2005, 36 years after that record's original release, Bunyan recorded Lookaftering, now available here as an expanded vinyl edition. The record features many of her collaborators, including Joanna Newsome, and the tone here is delicate, inviting and honest. This is beautiful, singer/songwriter folk music by a woman who probably should have been a legend by now.

Dating from 2001 to 2005, the demos were recorded at home by Vashti, accompanying herself on guitar while experimenting with synths — from piano to strings, pipe organ, harmonium, recorders and accordion. The sound is, of course, stripped back compared to that of the finished album, but the live version of "Lately" recorded at a 2006 early "comeback" gig in L.A, is absolutely pitch perfect.