Friday, November 30, 2007

David Fricke Reviews Vashti Bunyan For Rolling Stone.

Vashti Bunyan
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (Singles And Demos 1964 To 1967)
DiCristina
Online review

This set's title song is most notable not for the singer but the composers: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who gave the song - more folk-pop sweetness than "Brown Sugar" - to their producer Andrew Loog Oldham, who made it the debut release by his protégée, Vashti Bunyan. Today, Bunyan is a goddess to the freak-folk community, due to the sturdy beauty of her 1970 album, Just Another Diamond Day. But at the time of these rarities, Bunyan was part Joan Baez, part Marianne Faithfull, with a virginal alto floating through Pet Sounds-like madrigals. The unreleased singles "Winter Is Blue" and "Coldest Night of the Year" and the loping daydream "17 Pink Sugar Elephants," from a '66 home tape, have the exotic-minstrel flair of '66 Donovan, while a CD of 1964 demos - Banyan alone, plucking guitar on her originals - is warm juvenilia. The diamonds came later.


DAVID FRICKE

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