Release Date 7th February 2025
Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Lookaftering’ is 20 years old. To mark the occasion, and also
Vashti’s 80th birthday, an expanded edition is to be released. As well as the
original studio album itself, the second disc features demo versions, an
alternate take of ‘Wayward’, and a live performances of ‘Lately’. This edition
also comes with sleeve notes from Vashti, producer Max Richter, Devendra
Banhart and a 16-page lyric booklet featuring a collection of paintings by
Vashti's daughter Whyn Lewis – paintings that closely, and coincidentally,
reflected the lyrics of the album.
Vashti says “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.”
Dating from 2001 to 2005, the demos were recorded at home by Vashti,
accompanying herself on acoustic and electric guitar and 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 an early “comeback”
gig in L.A. in 2006, orchestrated as on the record, is absolutely pitch perfect.
Listening to the demos and the final versions side-by-side while reading the
sleeve notes is a wonderful experience, learning and hearing how the songs
and the long-player evolved, with Vashti and Max Richter (who produced - and
played on - the album), explaining how all of the artists involved (Devendra
Banhart, Johanna Newson, Adem Ilhan, Robert Kirby and members of the
band Vetiver), touched by Vashti’s original 1970 ‘Just Another Diamond Day’
album, jumped at the opportunity to be there. As Max Richter recalls, “It felt like
a community project; a family of people coming together”.