Vashti Bunyan
Esplanade Concert Hall, Last Friday
It is remarkable that British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan’s musical aesthetic has remained so strikingly consistent over the years.
She released her debut folk album Just Another Diamond Day in 1970, thought it was a failure and then disappeared from the scene entirely until Lookaftering came out 35 years later.
In the interim, musical trends came and went, and she has gone from singing about the pain and joy of love and wanderlust to singing about her children. Yet, songs from the two albums blended into one seamless whole.
Backed by three musicians who played the guitar, violin, flute, accordion and piano, she created bucolic music that would not have sounded out of place in, say, 16th-century Elizabethan England. And her voice, ethereal and gossamer-light, was a thing of fragile beauty in the sparsely filled hall, its whispery vulnerability echoing the delicacy of human connection.
Within the confines of such a tightly defined sound, she was able to pour her life into song and the soft-spoken mother of three told the audience the story behind each composition.
She revealed a charmingly self-deprecating sense of humour, saying that Feet Of Clay was about “how I can’t dance”, and also poked fun at the fact that her music struggled to find an audience back in the day: “Train Song was released as a single in 1966 and nobody ever heard it.”
Things took an unexpected turn when Just Another Diamond Day was re-released in 2000. She became muse and mentor to purveyors of the neo-folk movement such as Devendra Banhart and eventually had the opportunity to put out another record and perform live.
It was touching when she said: “I’ve always dreamt of life on the road and now my children are grown and I’m back on it, and it’s lovely.”
For sharing her happiness, sadness, hopes and dreams through the finely-wrought beauty of her music, the appreciative audience thanked her with a standing ovation at the end of the evening. It was also as if to say: “Welcome back.”
(ST)