NEWS: Vashti Bunyan 20th anniversary album reissue of ‘Lookaftering’

Legendary singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan has announced Lookaftering – Expanded Edition, a reissue of her superlative second album, out on 7th February 2025 via FatCat Records. (Pre-order/pre-save here).Coinciding with Vashti’s 80th birthday, the new expanded 20th anniversary edition features the original studio album along with a second LP / disc of demos, an alternate take, and a live performance version. This edition also comes with reflective sleeve notes from Vashti, producer Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, and FatCat’s Dave Howell, as well as a 16-page lyric booklet featuring a collection of paintings by Vashti’s daughter Whyn Lewis  – paintings that they both say have closely, and coincidentally, reflected the lyrics of the album.Originally recorded between 2001 and 2005, the demos were created by Vashti at home, accompanying herself on electric and acoustic guitar, and experimenting with synth instrumentation – accordion, piano, strings, pipe organ, harmonium, recorders. The collection of demos offers a more stripped back sound compared to the finished album, and the live version of Lately recorded at an early “comeback” gig in LA in 2006, orchestrated as on the record, is absolutely pitch perfect.Listening to the demos and the final versions side-by-side while reading the sleeve notes is a wonderful experience, learning and hearing how the songs and the long-player evolved, with Vashti and Max Richter (who produced and played on the album), explaining how all of the artists involved (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Adem Ilhan, Robert Kirby and members of the band Vetiver), touched by Vashti’s original 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day, jumped at the opportunity to be there. Max Richter recalls, “It felt like a community project; a family of people coming together”.Devendra Banhart said: “Lookaftering is a quiet prayer for a world left behind, a remembrance of a world that could have been but never was, a Lookforwarding to a world that may yet still be… As ethereal and haunted as these eleven songs may be, they are also rooted in the earthly magic of wisdom born from experience. Something so rare and honest it’s nearly otherworldly in its total human-ness.”Speaking of the reissue, Vashti said: “the beautiful photograph of Max in the studio playing wine glasses with his young daughter’s violin bow, brings it all back to me – how very fortunate I have been.” Listen to “If I Were (Demo)” here.Lookaftering The Expanded Edition, is out 7 February 2025 via Fat Cat Records (Pre-order/pre-save here).

Lookaftering – Expanded Edition – Gatefold 2 x LP album art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIxzF7GehAU&t=9s

Photo credit: Christopher Fernandez