Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (Album Review)

 

Vashti Bunyan - Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind

(1964-1967/2007)

My copy: 2007 press by Dicristina Stair Builders and Spinney Records.

This compilation record was released in 2007 after interest in Vashti Bunyan’s music had slowly and steadily risen over a 30+ year gap since her debut LP. Driven away from a pursuit of music by low sales, Bunyan had retired from singing, leaving a small collection of demos and singles behind in the wake of her discouragement. This double LP contains the titular Rolling Stones cover as well as official studio takes and a host of lo-fi demos with a deeply personal, intimate sound. 

Bunyan’s tackling of “Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind” is surprisingly lively, though simultaneously stripped of the main psychedelic elements of the original. There is a certain regality added in Bunyan’s version; her delicate voice replacing playfulness with cool serenity. The title track and “I Want To Be Alone” both feature an array of session musicians, including Jimmy Page on guitar. There are arrangements for strings, accompanying bittersweet chamber-pop guitar arpeggios that twinkle like the stars above a warm cottage - Bunyan’s voice gently floating like smoke from the chimney. The prickled guitar dissonance of “Train Song” is relieved by strings, though the essence is rooted in country and cowboy trail songs and turned towards folk by Bunyan’s unique falsetto. 

“Love Song” introduces core themes of longing and wistfulness: concepts that stand firmly at the center of Bunyan’s work. There are inklings of early freak-folk in the euphoric falsetto and string swell of “Winter Is Blue” though the artist herself does not consider her work to be particularly inspired by folk. Also included is a rather novel contribution to male singer duo Twice As Much’s cover of the Christmas classic “Coldest Night Of The Year.” The acoustic gallop and melancholy harmonica of “I’d Like To Walk Around In Your Mind” tie in nicely with weeping lead guitar pokes, elevating further with Bunyan’s voice and string arrangements. 

The atmosphere becomes more lo-fi and personal as we reach an alternate take of “Winter Is Blue,” now led solely by Bunyan and her guitar. These tender, sincere demos mostly speak to insecurity, loneliness and heartbreak in a way that blends 60s pop with shockingly private thoughts (touching on depression and more vaguely on suicide). Both versions of “Don’t Believe What They Say” are wonderfully cathartic as are further tracks like “How Do I Know” or “Find My Heart Again.” Her best brush with psychedelic themes takes place on the imaginative “17 Pink Sugar Elephants” which could be interpreted as a commentary on capitalism or just a surrealist story.

Bunyan is an obvious and powerful vocal talent, though her words occasionally paint her as withdrawn and morose. There are a handful of redundancies on this album that can feel like padding for length, but the lo-fi nature of the demo recordings on the second half is actually more effective in the context of her private, relationship-centric lyrical concepts. It is unfortunate that it took roughly three decades for Vashti’s music to achieve the following it deserves, as she is even to this day overlooked in her craft.