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┌────────┐
────┤ Info ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Artist | Vashti Bunyan
Title | Heartleap
Genre | Folk Format | Album
Source | CDDA Time | 34:43
Label | FatCat Records Store | 2014
Catalog | FATCD131 Rip | 2015
Bitrate | 204 kbps Size | 53.80 MB
Freq | 44.1 kHz Encoder | Lame 3.98.4
┌────────┐
────┤ Tracks ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
01. Across The Water 3:47
02. Holy Smoke 4:48
03. Mother 3:29
04. Jellyfish 3:41
05. Shell 4:08
06. The Boy 1:39
07. Gunpowder 3:04
08. Blue Shed 2:11
09. Here 3:18
10. Heartleap 4:38
┌────────┐
────┤ Notes ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Vashti Bunyan is a folk chanteuse and singer/songwriter, best known for her
1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, which was rediscovered in the 21st
century and dusted off with a new CD issue as one of the great musical
finds of its era. Born in London in 1945 - and counting herself a direct
descendant of writer/preacher John Bunyan (1629-1688) - she first took up
the guitar while a student at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing,
from which she was ultimately expelled at age 18 for spending too much time
writing songs and not enough time painting. A bit of a free spirit even
then, she took a trip to New York and, while there, fell under the spell of
Bob Dylan's music, especially his album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan". Once
back in London, Bunyan was committed to a career in music, and through
theatrical agent Monte Mackay she soon met Rolling Stones manager/producer
Andrew Loog Oldham.
It's been nine years since Vashti Bunyan released her sophomore album,
"Lookaftering". When contrasted with the three and a half decades between
it and her classic 1970 debut, "Just Another Diamond Day", it seems like a
blip. Bunyan has said in an interview that "Heartleap" will be her final
album. That it sums up everything she has to say. For those who take in
these tender, poignant songs about relationships (familial and
interpersonal), life experiences, and reflections, this is sad news. Bunyan
produced and edited "Heartleap" herself; this is a first. She plays the
guitar well enough, but though piano appears throughout, Bunyan doesn't
play the instrument. She carefully assembled these parts, from single
notes. While her use of the synthesizer was discouraged and put aside on
her last offering, here it unobtrusively sits with organic strings,
guitars, piano, and an occasional recorder. Despite the intense focus and
years of recording, and contributions from other artists sent from as far
away as New York and Los Angeles, "Heartleap" flows dreamily from the
outset.
"Across The Water" contrasts notions of being emotionally stuck, then
freeing herself to live a life of choice; Jo Mango's kalimba adds an earthy
resonance. "Holy Smoke" - with a subtle backing chorus from Devendra
Banhart - allows Gareth Dickson's ghostly, melodic electric guitar to
support the airy yet determined vocal about refusing to allow grief and
sorrow to claim the joy in one's life. "Mother", with its gently cascading,
doubled piano lines and ghostly strings, is perhaps the set's most
beautiful track, offering the memory of catching her own mother dancing,
singing, and playing the piano in the precious few moments she had to
herself apart from her daily duties. "Gunpowder" reflects on an at times
complex communication in a continuing relationship with a former lover. The
staggered and layered wordless harmonies that introduce "Here" are
haunting; they underscore the quietly expressed but nonetheless real fear
of abandonment articulated in its lyric.
The closing title track is named for the cover illustration (Hart's Leap by
her daughter, Whyn Lewis). Each line in the song begins with the word
'heart'. It takes in the entire cycle of love, joy, loss, grief, and the
marks each leaves upon one as time passes. The melody, comprised of single
piano notes and fingerpicked acoustic guitar, underscores a tome that feels
captured in the moment. It's as if Bunyan wondered what might transpire
once these words were sung. The recording is her witness. The entirety of
"Heartleap" is wispy, spare, understated; moving in insight and honesty.
But this song - and the compassion and empathy with which it expresses the
enormity of these emotions in the cycle of life - is perhaps the most
piercing and affirmative in the lot. If there has to be a final statement
from Bunyan, this painstaking, sometimes hesitant, yet always brave and
vulnerable one is not only fitting, but essential, summing her life's work
to date.
┌────────┐
────┤ Group ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘