It’s not often you come across an artist you can genuinely refer to as a ‘cult legend’, but Vashti Bunyan is truly that. A full 35 years on from her only previous album, the singer returns with her first new solo work, a breathtakingly beautiful album.

Far from being simply some kind of appendage tacked onto the end of an amazing story and a past classic, ‘Lookaftering’ is a fully beautiful album in its own right. Produced by fellow Edinburgh resident Max Richter (whose ‘Blue notebooks’ album was released on FatCat’s 130701 imprint in 2004) – who also co-arranged with Vashti, it’s a rich, beautifully arranged and stirring album. Developing gradually and organically – with work initially taking place between Max and Vashti’s homes, and then at various studios in Edinburgh, London and Glasgow – ‘Lookaftering’ is anchored around Vashti’s voice and picked acoustic guitar, and Max’s piano playing and co-arranging. Its instrumentation includes a string quartet, oboe, harp, French horn, recorder, flute, hammer dulcimer, glasses, harmonium, and Rhodes piano, and it features contributions from Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Adem, Adam Pierce (Mice Parade), Robert Kirby (Nick Drake / etc.), Otto Hauser and Kevin Barker (Espers / Currituck County)
As well as a neat balance between gentle, sparse songs and heavier, more orchestrated numbers, there is a beautiful play between the lush instrumental arrangements and the incredibly intimate, in-your-ear presence of Vashti’s voice. There’s a real honesty to the album – from the fragile intimacy of the vocal itself to the stories it weaves. Just as ‘Diamond Day’ was a very pure document of a journey, ‘Lookaftering’ is similarly based on stories taken directly from lived experience (the death of a brother; the joys / fears of motherhood; the tension between freedom / commitment and travel / domesticity). There’s also a great integrity forged from the cohesiveness between lyrical content and musical form (the gentle rolling and pitching of the melodies on ‘Same But Different’; the vocal roundelay on ‘Here Before’; the ice-shiver of dulcimer on ‘Turning Backs’). The album title itself, a personalised word that describes the role of “taking care of someone – human or animal – or even something that needs to be done, that needs lookaftering.”

“Her work is a testament to the power of even the quietest music to help us feel things deeply, an experience that lasts for a few minutes that we can return to for a lifetime.” – Pitchfork