LOVE SONG

Now that I've listened to all three Vashti Bunyan albums, I tend to prefer the two from this Millenium, Lookaftering (2005) and Heartleap (2014). In these modern times there aren't many of female artists as timelessly intimate, delicate, serene and ripped down in the musical expression as her, whereas I can quite easily understand why her debut album Just Another Diamond Day didn't receive notable reception in 1970. Maybe she was seen as some kind of a "poor woman's Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell" at the time (at least by Americans if they knew her in the first place back then), when so many folk singer-songwriters and folk groups from both sides of the Atlantic had already recorded their important albums.

This four-song single was released along the vinyl re-release of the debut album; it came enclosed with a limited amount of the initial pressing and was also sold separately. The material dates from the sixties, ie. preceeding the recording of the 1970 album.

'Love Song' was originally the B side of the 1966 single 'Train Song' and is at least just as good as the album material with which iit is rather similar. Simple, little folk ballad with a sparse arrangement of acoustic guitar, and some cello if I'm not mistaken. 'I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind' was an unreleased acetate recording from 1967. There's some harmonica in this slightly joyous but small-scale & intimately tender song.

'Winter is Blue' (unreleased acetate, 1966) was among the first Vashti songs I've come across from folk rock anthologies and I'm pretty fond of it, despite a little weak sound quality. The tender melody is very beautiful. 'Iris's Song (Version Two)' is an alternate version of the album track, and actually I prefer this one as the more sincere- sounding, lacking Dave Swarbrick's fiddle and mandolin heard on the album version.

It's a pity she didn't arrive in the music biz more visibly a few years before 1970 when it was already too late to make a big impression with this kind of delicate folk songs. These songs prove that she was as good in 1966 as in 1970.