The Worst Beatle

According to Wikipedian lore, at age 18 Vashti Bunyan listened to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and decided to become a musician.

Thankfully, it wasn't Dylan's activism that inspired her (ahem... Joan Baez!). It wasn't his gravelly voice or Rimbaud-esque surrealism, either.

While Dylan used an old form to express contemporary feelings in poetic language, Vashti sounded just plain old-fashioned. Perhaps because of this, her career in the 60s never climbed out of obscurity, and eventually she stopped making music, presumably to slip into the domestic countryside her music evoked.

Here are some examples of her material from the 60s:

Vashti Bunyan - Find My Heart Again
Vashti Bunyan - Hebridean Sun
Vashti Bunyan - Iris Song (Part 2)

Flash forward to 2005. Vashti releases a new CD with Max Richter as producer. She collaborates with Animal Collective for the Prospective Hummer EP. She's performing with Devendra Banhart. For her small but devoted group of fans, it's as if Nick Drake crawled out of the grave to release new material.

Vashti Bunyan - Brother

Why the comeback? The truth is, Vashti has a beautiful voice. She is best when she soothes, and in this sense listening to her returns us to the comforts of childhood. We all want to be tucked in bed again. Although the young intellectual folk-singer smitten with Dylan is present in some of her material (I'd Like To Walk Around In Your Mind), it is this maternal quality which bridges the several decades of absence in her singing career.