Stream Vashti Bunyan "Heartleap" on Pitchfork Advance through October 6th

You can stream Vashti Bunyan's new Heartleap album in its entirety via Pitchfork Advance through October 6th.

The CD ships this week, and the vinyl and FLAC/MP3 download will be available on October 14th.

Preorder the album on  iTunes and receive a free track, "Across the Water," immediately!

Vashti Bunyan "Across The Water" track stream available now

Noisey is premiering the first track off Vashti Bunyan's Heartleap, "Across The Water". 

Heartleap will be released in North American by the DiCristina label on October 7th.

More information has been posted on Pitchfork, FACT, and, of course, here.

Vashti Bunyan's Heartleap released October 7th on DiCristina!

Nine years after ‘Lookaftering’, her last album of new material, legendary British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan returns with a breathtaking new LP. Recorded largely in her home studio, ‘Heartleap’ is a unique and entrancing collection of ten songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album.

Vashti’s third album follows her rediscovery - after thirty years in the wilderness - with the 2000 re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (a bona fide cult classic that made # 53 in the Observer Music monthly’s ‘top 100 British albums of all time’), and the critical success of 2005’s ‘Lookaftering’. With ‘Heartleap’ she has delivered an album with a classic sound, where – for the first time – she herself has been in control of the whole process, from writing and arranging to playing and recording. Working predominantly from a studio set up in her Edinburgh home, the record was slowly pieced together, and reveals an artist at her peak, capturing her songs within fluid settings that masterfully marry content and form.

Both ‘JADD’  and ‘Lookaftering’ saw Vashti‘s songs arranged and framed by others. Joe Boyd’s production and Robert Kirby’s arranging of the former remain timelessly classy, whilst Max Richter’s elegantly beautiful production of Lookaftering was enhanced by contributions from a raft of supporting artists - all eagerly adding their colours. Vashti is justly proud of ‘Lookaftering’, but ‘Heartleap’ is a more personal record, standing solely on the merits and patient endeavour of its author rather than being buoyed by and filtered through the cachet and collaborative creativity of a powerful supporting cast.

The vast majority of ‘Heartleap’ was recorded and edited by Vashti, who “wanted it to be more akin to my very first recordings, the ones even before ‘Diamond Day’. I wanted to try to emerge from the shelter of others and stand out in the open. It would have been much easier had I worked with a producer and an engineer - I would not have had to spend so much time on editing - but that’s been the interesting part. If I’d taken these songs and gone into a studio with them they might have turned out very differently, perhaps more 'produced' - but not as near to how I hear them for myself.”

Recording her vocals when no one else was around to overhear - freed Vashti up to deliver more confident performances. Equally, working without the induced pressures of studio deadlines enabled her to craft it slowly and lovingly in her own time, weaving together tracks out of numerous takes. Predominantly guitar or piano led - with additional instrumentation building throughout - the songs have no underpinning bass-line or percussion, giving each instrument and voice the chance to pace itself.

Where the synthetic instrumentation on Vashti’s ‘Lookaftering’ demos was rejected in favour of recording the warmth and organic nature of real acoustic instruments, ‘Heartleap’ retains those electronic voices, alongside  studio-recorded string and recorder arrangements  - the two mixed in a delicate balance between the synthesized and the organic. Freely admitting that she can’t actually play the piano, Vashti built the keyboard parts from single notes and multiple one-handed takes. No-one else would have made it or played it that way and it’s that voice, her own voice, that helps lend the record its power and marks it out as distinctive.

 “The whole point of the album was finally to learn a way that would enable me to record the music that is in my head, by myself. I neither read nor write music, nor can I play piano with more than one hand at a time, but I have loved being able to work it all out for myself and make it sound the way I wanted. I’ve built these songs over years. The album wouldn't have happened any other way. Sometimes when I replace the arrangements with real instruments they don't work in the same way. The extended notes of the clarinet on the song ‘Heartleap’ for instance could not be played on a real clarinet. I can't 'play' a musician playing their instrument - I can't make them play each note as I want it, but with a keyboard and a music program I am the player."

Concise as ever, Vashti’s lyrics open out a series of locket-like miniatures - stories of family and friends, lives and loves, memories, dreams and realities; of differences in perception and the gaps between people / meanings / understandings; of coping, getting by, surviving. “All the songs are based on real stories or real people, 'Mother' especially. 'Blue Shed' was written when the house was still full of young people slamming doors and yelling. (I do miss them now). 'Gunpowder ' is about an ex-partner with whom communication can still be difficult."  There is no vast sweep or ambitious stabbing at the grandiose in her lyric writing, yet in their honesty these close-focused articulations draw you in and resonate with heartfelt emotions and universal truths.

The luminous musical arrangements act with the lyrics illustratively - ‘Jellyfish’ ripples and floats from side to side, “and is soft apart from the vibraphone which is quite harsh - like the dream it's about. The kalimba and the tumbling guitars in Across the Water are to give the song the sound of waves on shingle, and the piano on 'Mother' is to sound a little like the old un-tuned upright piano I overheard my mother playing sometimes, 'briefly unbound' from her duties as wife and mother."

Recording in studios in California, New York and London - but mostly alone in her own studio - it took in total seven years to put together these ten songs. The first was written in 2007, the last just two months before mastering. A hiatus in recording came with the untimely passing of Robert Kirby in 2009. Robert had arranged three songs on ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ and the pair had just reconnected and planned to work on new arrangements together - just weeks before he died. It would be another two years before she took the decision that she must arrange the music herself, with Robert always in mind. The subsequent three years saw her gradually picking the thread back up and working with renewed purpose. Slowly more songs found their way out of her. Gems like ‘The Boy’ - which she’d sat on, fretted over and intended to ditch - were prised from oblivion. Seven became ten and those around her finally began to really believe that an end was in sight. The right final mix frustratingly eluded her until the album magically came together in a week in May 2014 - when it was balanced and mastered beautifully at the hands of mixing engineer Martin Korth - and mastering genius Mandy Parnell at her Black Saloon studios in London.

The album’s striking cover artwork is once again taken from a painting by Vashti’s daughter, Whyn Lewis, and forms a neat companion to her hare painting featured on ‘Lookaftering’, giving the impression (besides both album’s titles being portmanteaus) of a pair of bookends. Whyn describes this painting (titled 'Hart’s Leap’) as being “about getting away unscathed… about confidence and self-assuredness, and wisdom. The deer is leaping forward while looking backwards - and it has a little grin. It is said that deer make a large bound of joy when they know they are escaping. The deer is linked with the deerhound shown on the deer’s collar - what it has been escaping from. The deerhound in this case really is just allegory for the thing that chases or hounds you. Life is most appreciated when it is challenged.”

One of the final songs to be written, the gorgeously gauzy, autobiographical title track came to Vashti all of a sudden in March this year, as she was gazing at Whyn's painting. Recorded straight off, with only minor changes made in the final mix, it closes the album perfectly. A bittersweet song, it cryptically catalogues and a whole life’s worth of loving, losing, letting go, getting through; of heartbreaks and happiness and the lulls in between – through a minimal, modular, repetitive structure with recourse to just a handful of compound word variations - surges and tugs between head and heart. Simultaneously aching and hopeful, it looks back with both pain and joy, with resigned acceptance.  If it truly is to be the final word on a final album, then it is an utterly fitting and devastatingly beautiful one.

Like the deer on the cover painting, ‘Heartleap’ moves gracefully, enchantingly. Overcoming adversity through sheer willpower, its very existence is a dazzling triumph.

‘Heartleap’ will be released on FatCat in UK / Europe on October 6th and in North America via DiCristina on October 7th.

Vashti will play a run of UK tour dates in smaller settings with guitarist Gareth Dickson (her first since 2010) in support of the album, with more dates to be added in early 2015.

UK Tour Dates:

07 Oct - MAC, Birmingham, UK
08 Oct - St. Pancras Church, London, UK
09 Oct - St. Pancras Church, London, UK
11 Oct - The Band Room, Farndale, UK
12 Oct - St. Philip’s Church, Manchester, UK

Vashti Bunyan Movie Playing In LA Tomorrow.

Happen to be hanging out in Los Angeles tomorrow (6/11/09)? A documentary "Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before" will be playing at Silent Movie Theater (611 N Fairfax Ave) as part of their "F is For Folk" series. The film retraces Vashti’s musical past and features interviews with Andrew Loog Oldham, Devendra Banhart, Max Richter and others. More info can be found HERE.

Vashti Bunyan Commercial On Year End Wrap Up.

Vashti Bunyan's 'Trian Song ' used on the Reebok: Join The Migration commercial made it on the Advertising Age top ten ad songs of the year list. Ad songs of the year? Wow man, there really are year end lists for every conceivable topic (shitty or otherwise) known to man.

9. VASHTI BUNYAN: "TRAIN SONG"
REEBOK

Many of you will probably recognize players in this spot like Eli Manning, Peyton Manning and about 18 others trudging through deserts and abandoning half-mowed lawns to arrive at a stadium in a migratory V formation for the fall season. Of course, we were drawn to the recently rejuvenated folk hero Vashti Bunyan, who sings about glow worms; we're not the type to get chills just thinking about fourth-and-goal crunch-time, so McGarryBowen has obviously done something right.

Essie Jain Reviewed On Pitchfork Today.

Better late than never review of Essie Jain's The Inbetween CD released in May of this year.
Essie Jain:
The Inbetween
[Ba Da Bing / Leaf; 2008]
Rating: 6.9
Original post

Looking back, Joan Baez's high, heady trills seem eerily indicative of the unspoken melancholy that plagued the late 1960s in America: Baez's songs, no matter how upbeat, are seeped in a vague and persistent longing for something better, something less devastating. British-born singer and songwriter Essie Jain doesn't sound much like Baez-- she's not a folk singer, exactly, and her voice is often deep and direct where Baez's is light and warbly-- but her second LP, The Inbetween, is heavy with the same odd, pervasive uneasiness. From the nervous, scuttling piano notes which open "Here We Go" through the fog-horn desolation of the extra-grim "I Remember It Just Like This", The Inbetween is quiet and desperate, a trembling testament to general disillusionment.

Jain's minimal compositions-- most tracks feature only vocals and piano or acoustic guitar-- are dark and distrustful ("There is not an innocent man around us who isn't under siege," she bellows in "Please") and tinged with an otherworldliness that earns her comparisons to freak-folkers past and present-- especially Vashti Bunyan, Sandy Denny, and White Magic's Mira Billotte. The cinematic bleakness of The Inbetween can be wearying, but it's also the record's central conceit; its atmospherics are at least as essential as its songs. Consequently, The Inbetween becomes the kind of record that leaves its listeners craving melodramatic context (walking despondently down a mysterious alley, fedora deflecting light rain, face obscured)-- anything more distinctive and tortured than just slouching over on a living room couch.

Jain had a track ("Why") included on the Slim Moon-curated The Sound the Hare Heard (alongside a slew of singer-songwriters, including Death Vessel, Sufjan Stevens, Thao Nguyen, Wooden Wand, and Laura Veirs), and her ghostly 2007 debut, We Made This Ourselves, placed her squarely within the new spook-folk paradigm. All of Jain's work is focused, mostly, on her lingering voice: It can be deep and prodding or high and vaporous, depending on the moment. "Do It", one of the richer tracks on the record (it includes piano, guitar, and drums), is also one of the strongest-- Jain's vocals, raw and uncorrected, nudge and jab. In "Here We Go", a steady piano melody and twittering drums back up Jain's playful, jazzy vocal line, one of the lightest included here-- "Oh, oh here we go," she grins.

The Inbetween is a remarkably wistful album, the kind that can be trying or cathartic, depending on when and how you listen, but Jain's voice is mostly stunning-- it's indicative of her precise time and place, and, accordingly, means something to all of us.

- Amanda Petrusich, November 6, 2008

Vashti Bunyhan NPR's Day To Day Feature 10/24/08.

The condensed history of Vashti Bunyan on NPR's Day To Day.

Vashti Bunyan: 40 Years Later, A Musical Rebirth
By Christian Bordal
Original post with audio interview link.

Day To Day October 24, 2008 - Back in the mid-'60s, Andrew Oldham, manager of The Rolling Stones, saw something promising in a quiet young singer-songwriter named Vashti Bunyan. So he brought her into the studio to record a single called "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Oldham himself presided over the session.

"Oh, yeah, he was there," Bunyan says. "Mick Jagger was there. Everybody was there. But nobody really spoke to me, and I certainly didn't speak to anybody. I was way too shy."

Bunyan says she's always been shy.

"Though I had a huge ego about my songs," she says. "I thought these were great and everybody should listen to these. But as a person, I had no way of persuading anybody. I was just way too shy and pretty much merged with the wallpaper, I think."

Bunyan's shyness comes through in her soft, tentative singing. She says that, despite years spent trying to overcome it, singing more strongly just doesn't suit her.

She spent three years recording demos and singles with Oldham and others, but in spite of her own great expectations, she made little headway. In 1967, she says, she decided that she'd had enough.

But if Bunyan's arrival on the London music scene had caused little fanfare, the method of her departure three years later did raise some eyebrows — if only those of her parents. Bunyan had been living with her boyfriend in the woods behind his art school, but they were kicked out. So they decided to move to Scotland, via an antiquated form of transport.

As she and her boyfriend made their slow pilgrimage to Scotland by horse and cart — "Horses don't need petrol," she says — Bunyan says she decided she was done with recording, though she continued to write new songs.

But a chance meeting with the well-known folk-music producer Joe Boyd convinced her to go back into the studio once more, if only to document her journey and record her new songs.

The result was Just Another Diamond Day — an album that, much like her earlier efforts, hardly caused a ripple in the pop-music marketplace.

"People dismissed it as nursery rhymes for children and being very insignificant," Bunyan says. "And I just thought, 'Oh, well, I've made another mistake. They must be right. It must be rubbish. I'll never pick up a guitar again. So I didn't."

And she didn't.

"It was like taking a whole part of myself and putting it in a cupboard and putting a padlock on it," she says. "It was painful."

Instead, Bunyan spent the next 30 years raising a family and farm animals in rural Scotland.

Then, a few years ago, while surfing the Web, Bunyan says she was amazed to find that the music she'd given up for good was actually alive and well. In fact, Just Another Diamond Day and other early recordings were becoming cult classics to a new generation of musicians, and in 2004, that album was reissued. In 2005, Bunyan released her first batch of new songs in 35 years on a thoughtful, bittersweet album called Lookaftering.

"When I first got on the Internet and realized that Diamond Day hadn't just disappeared off the face of the earth and that people were still listening to the songs, it made me able to pick up my guitar again and get some kind of meaning back from it for myself," she says.

Bunyan says she's still shy and still bedeviled by issues of self-confidence. But, more than 40 years after she took her first tentative steps down the path toward a musical life, she's now finally leading it. She set up a small home studio, and, with no more children in the house, is hard at work on her next batch of quiet, carefully crafted little folk-pop poems.

"I'm writing about more particular things: more particular emotions and relationships," she says. "I'm just trying to dig a little deeper, maybe? But I've only got five songs so far. So it's kind of hard to tell."

Vashti Bunyan Song In Reebok Commercial.

Reebok TV commercial featuring Vashti Bunyan's "Train Song" - stranger things have happened on prime time.

Vetiver Thing Of The Past Reviewed In The NY Times.

VETIVER
“Thing of the Past”
(Gnomonsong)
Original post

Generally for a rock band of at least semiserious intentions, the time for a covers album is when it has grown established and a little confused: its 4th or 5th or 10th record, say. Third is a little soon.

But Vetiver, from San Francisco, is basically a folk group with amps and drums, and covering other people’s songs isn’t a grand statement; it’s a folk ritual, a means of dissemination and cross-pollination. “Thing of the Past,” its third album, renders faithful versions of very obscure songs in their own style, which is Vetiver’s style anyway: late 1960s and early 1970s settled, meditative, West Coast electric folk-rock. The record is super studied, but never bloodless. And it’s much better than that sounds.

Andy Cabic, the band’s leader, doesn’t just choose, for example, a lesser-known Neil Young song. Instead he’s chosen a song whose original iteration contained possibly Mr. Young’s most obscure guest appearance: “Houses,” from Elyse Weinberg’s album “Elyse” (1968). Vetiver’s version is sweet and centered, careful and musical, a balance between larking and scholarship. I can’t quite understand how the band pulled it off.

Such is the case all the way through the album. “To Baby” by Biff Rose; “Lon Chaney,” by Garland Jeffreys; “Hurry on Sundown,” by Hawkwind; “Sleep a Million Years,” by Dia Joyce. (Who is Dia Joyce? I looked her up online and found almost nothing.) Somehow this is not a precious or pretentious record; these versions are delicate and sturdy at the same time. And the band recruits a few of its singer-songwriter heroes, Vashti Bunyan and Michael Hurley, from its favorite era. Mr. Cabic’s voice sounds contemporary with theirs, a little like Doug Yule’s, from the Velvet Underground.

Vetiver centers itself on slow, reliable grooves and drones; it finds the meat of a song and doesn’t grandstand. And yet the record so clearly follows Mr. Cabic’s pleasure principle that it short-circuits the good reasons not to make something like this.
BEN RATLIFF

Vetiver will be playing an Amoeba Berkeley in-store at 6:00 PM this evening & tons of Euro dates to follow this summer:

5/16 Brighton, UK @ Theatre Royal (w/ Vashti Bunyan)
05/17 Brussels, BEL @ Les Nuits Botanique
05/18 Fulda DEU @ Das Kreuz
05/20 Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik-Ziegel Oh Lac
05/21 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
05/23 Coventry, UK @ Tin Angel
05/26 Cambrige UK @ Barfly
05/27 Leeds, UK @ Faversham
05/28 Liverpool, UK @ Sound City Festival
05/29 Edinburgh, UK @ Cabaret Voltair
05/30 Glasgow, UK @ Arches
05/ 31 Aberdeen, UK @ The Tunnels
06/01 Newcastle, UK @ Cluny
06/02 Nottingham, UK @ Bodega Social
06/03 Bristol, UK @ Cube Cinema
06/04 Manchester, UK @ Road House
06/05 London, UK @ St. Giles in The Fields Church
06/06 Cardiff, UK @ Barfly
06/07 Belfast, UK @ Black Box
06/08 Dublin, IRE @ Crawdaddy
06/10 Birmingham, UK @ Barfly
06/13 Porto, PRT @ Passos Manuel
06/14 Lisbon, PRT @ ZDB Gallery
06/17 Barcelona, ESP @ Sidecar
06/18 Madrid, ESP @ Joy Eslave (w/ Akron/family)
06/19 Seville, ESP @ Teatro Central (w/ Akron/Family)
06/20 Granada, ESP @ Teatro Alhambra (w/ Akron/Family)
06/21 Malaga, ESP @Teatro Canovas (w/ Akron/Family)
06/27 Paris, FR @ Café De la Danse
06/29 Glastonbury, UK @ Glastonbury Festival

Vetiver's "Covers Album" Gets The Pitchfork Press Note.

Hey, remember that "all-covers LP" Andy Cabic and his Vetiver gang were cooking up way back when? Seems it's well on its way to a listening device of your choosing, complete with title, tracklist, release month, and all those other vital stats your analytical mind craves.

A Thing of the Past is the rather appropriate title Vetiver have given to their tribute to assorted songs of yesteryear. In addition to previously mentioned covers of jams by Hawkwind, Townes Van Zandt, Elyse Weinberg, Biff Rose, and "Spirit in the Sky" guy Norman Greenbaum, the set also includes takes on tunes by Michael Hurley, Ian/Iain Matthews, and Bobby Charles, among others.

Look for this Thing in shops come May (exact date TBA) bearing the Gnomonsong stamp, and listen closely for guest appearances from Vashti Bunyan, members of the Chapin Sisters, and Hurley himself (who sings on Vetiver's "cover" of his own "Blue Driver" and contributes mock trumpet elsewhere).

That Vetiver remix 12" on Gnomonsong is out now, while Cabic continues writing new material for the next, non-cover-centric Vetiver album.

Perhaps you'll hear some of the new stuff as the band hits the road this March and April, where they'll be pulling double duty on founding Jayhawks member Gary Louris' tour. Vetiver will both open and act as the backing band for Mr. Louris, so go easy on 'em, eh?

A Thing of the Past (songwriters in brackets):

01 Houses [Elyse Weinberg]
02 Roll on Babe [Derroll Adams]
03 Sleep a Million Years [Dia Joyce]
04 Hook & Ladder [Norman Greenbaum]
05 To Baby [Biff Rose]
06 Road to Ronderlin [Ian Matthews]
07 Lon Chaney [Garland Jeffreys]
08 Hurry on Sundown [Dave Brock, Hawkwind]
09 Swimming Song [Loudon Wainwright III]
10 Blue Driver [Michael Hurley]
11 Standing [Towns Van Zandt]
12 I Must Be in a Good Place Now [Bobby Charles]

Vetiver, opening for and backing Gary Louris:

03-16 Seattle, WA - Showbox
03-17 Vancouver, British Columbia - Richard's on Richards
03-18 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
03-20 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
03-21 Los Angeles, CA - El Rey Theatre
03-23 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
03-25 Minneapolis, MN - State Theater
03-27 Madison, WI - Barrymore Theater (no Vetiver opening set)
03-28 Chicago, IL - The Vic
03-29 Pittsburgh, PA - Mr Small's Theater
03-30 Toronto, Ontario - Mod Club Theatre
04-01 Somerville, MA - Somerville Theater
04-02 New York, NY - Town Hall
04-04 Chapel Hill, NC - Cat's Cradle
04-05 Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse

Mega List of Year End Lists

AKRON/FAMILY Love Is Simple (Young God)
#09 Mojo Magazine top ten underground albums of 2007
#15 Treblezine.com top 50 albums of 2007
#18 "Ed is a Portal" - Treblezine.com top 50 songs of 2007
#80 Paste top 100 albums of 2007
NPR.org Top Ten Genre-Busting Records for 2007

ANGELS OF LIGHT We Are Him (Young God)
#21 Tiny Mix Tapes best album covers of 2007
#49 Cokemachineglow.com top 50 albums of 2007

BEIRUT Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing!)
#01 The Mac Weekly 2007: the year in music
#01 Blog Beat top 5 albums of 2007
#02 Reformissionary best albums of 2007
#02 Muzzle Of Bees.com best albums of 2007
#02 BWANK! Blog top ten of 2007
#04 "The Penalty" - Coffeesnorter Blog best videos of the year
#04 Superb Live Blog best albums of 2007
#04 MP7 Blogas top albums of 2007
#05 Criminal Records Blog / Lillian bakers dozen for 2007
#06 Deaf Indie Elephants.com top 20 albums of 2007
#07 Lawrence.com
#07 March on Electric Children Blog top 15 albums of 2007
#09 Pitchfork guest list best of 2007: Rodrigo Gorky
#10 The Sky Report best of 2007 - album of the year
#11 “Flying Club Cup” - It Covers The Hillsides Blog top songs of 2007
#12 Stereogum.com Gummy Awards - best album of 2007
#12 Anyones Guess Blog 14 best favorite recommended albums of 2007
#14 “Guyamas Sonora” How's The Pie? Blog top 25 songs of 2007
#16 Chinese Restaurant In The Forest top 27 of 2007
#17 “The Penalty” - Gorilla Vs. Bear songs fo the year
#17 Musecology Blog the 30 albums - best of 2007
#19 MetaMusic top 50 albums of 2007
#20 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07
#20 My Old Kentucky Blog: Dodge's favorite 50 albums of 2007
#22 NPR Listeners Pick the Year's Best CDs, From All Songs Considered
#25 Hate Something Beautiful. Com Best of 2007: Best Full-Length Albums
#26 Idolator.com top 50 albums of 2007
#26 Q Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#26 Bleep.com top 50 albums of 2007
#29 Lines Through Lines Blog top 30 albums of 2007
#36 Treblezine.com top 50 albums of 2007
#37 Uncut Magazine You Rate Uncut's 50 favourite albums of the year
#37 Drowned In Sound top 50 of 2007
#40 Pitchfork top 50 albums of 2007
#40 “Nates” - Propeller music mayhem: Considering the top albums of 2007
#44 Harp Magazine top 50 CDs of 2007
#48 “Nates” - Treblezine.com top 50 songs of 2007
#49 How's The Pie? Blog top 50 albums of 2007
#50 NME Year-End Critics' Polls '07
#58 PopMatters.com best albums of 2007
#65 Boomkat our favourite 100 albums for 2007!
#74 Paste top 100 albums of 2007
Best of 2007 - I'm Just Sayin Is All
The Essential Albums of 2007 - To Die By Your Side Blog
Daily Collegian - Collegian music critics present top albums of 2007
I Was Told There Would Be Bacon Blog top 20 albums of the year
Piccadilly Records top 30 albums of the year
Honorable mention top 25 albums of 2005 Otchster.com
Honorable mention Best of 2007 - AlphabeticalORDER
Honorable mention for top 7 albums of 2007 - MP3Wox.com
Honorable mention top albums of 2007 Sound on the Sound.com
Honorable mention favorite 20 albums of 2007 - Almostcool.org
Runner Up Favorite Albums of 2007 Extravaganza! - MusicWarship.com
“In The Mausoluem” You Set The scene Blog 2007 top ten songs

VASHTI BUNYAN Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (DiCristina)
#05 Other Music top 25 reissues of the year

PATRICK CLEANDENIM Baby Come Home (Ba Da Bing!)
#17 Almostcool.org favorite 20 albums of 2007

COLLEEN Les Ondes Silenciuese (Leaf)
#21 Boomkat our favourite 100 albums for 2007
#41 The Wire Magazine Top 50 Albums of the year
#44 Stylus Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#50 Bleep.com top 50 albums of 2007
NPR.org Top Ten Genre-Busting Records for 2007

DEERHUNTER Cryptograms (Kranky)
#01 The Sky Report best of 2007 - album of the year
#03 Sam Fogarino of Interpol (via Filter)
#04 Mike McGonigal (yeti magazine)
#04 Paul Banks of Interpol (via Filter)
#04 Cole Alexander of Black Lips (via Filter)
#05 Tiny Mix Tapes favorite albums of 2007
#11 Drowned In Sound top 50 of 2007
#11 Criminal Records Blog / Lillian bakers dozen for 2007
#14 Pitchfork top 50 albums of 2007
#19 Treblezine.com top 50 albums of 2007
#21 The Wire Magazine Top 50 Albums of the year
#27 Boomkat our favourite 100 albums for 2007!
#31 Stereogum.com Gummy Awards - best album of 2007
#46 "Wash Off" - Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks of the Year Revealed

THE DRAGONS B.F.I. (Ninja Tune)
#29 Bleep.com top 50 albums of 2007

EFTERKLANG Parades (Leaf)
#23 Mojo Magazine Class of 2007
#24 Drowned In Sound top 50 of 2007

FIELD MUSIC Tones of Town (Memphis Industries)
#02 Lines Through Lines Blog top 30 albums of 2007
#17 Mojo Magazine Class of 2007
#29 Drowned In Sound top 50 of 2007
#38 Cokemachineglow.com top 50 albums of 2007
#40 Stereogum.com Gummy Awards - best album of 2007
#40 Q Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#40 Idolator.com top 50 albums of 2007
#66 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07

DANIEL HIGGS Ancestral Songs (Holy Mountain)
#03 Mojo Magazine top ten underground albums of 2007

JANA HUNTER There's No Home (Gnomonsong)
#34 “Babies” - Gorilla vs. Bear songs of 2007
#38 Boomkat our favourite 100 albums for 2007!
#98 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07

ESSIE JANE We Made This Ourselves (Ba Da Bing!)
#12 “Glory” - Little Boy's Choir Blog 2007 Opinion List: Favorite Tracks

KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW What Is? (In The Red)
#33 Pitchfork top 50 albums of 2007

LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver (DFA)
#01 Uncut Magazine You Rate Uncut's 50 favourite albums of the year
#01 Stylus Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#01 Drowned In Sound top 50 of 2007
#01 Piccadilly Records top 30 albums of the year
#01 "All My Friends" - Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks of the Year Revealed
#01 Guardian picks of the year 2007's best albums
#02 Pitchfork top 50 albums of 2007
#02 Amazon.com Best of 2007: Top 100 Editors' Picks
#02 Exclaim! Magazine Frequencies: Year in Review 2007
#02 The Sky Report best of 2007 - album of the year
#02 Rhapsody Blog Best of 2007: Electronic/Dance
#02 “All My Friends” - Treblezine.com top 50 songs of 2007
#03 How's The Pie? Blog top 50 albums of 2007
#03 PopMatters.com best albums of 2007
#03 PopMatters.com 10 best Electronic albums of 2007
#03 “Us Vs Them” PROPELLER - Music mayhem: Considering the top albums of 2007
#03 "Someone Great” - Treblezine.com top 50 songs of 2007
#03 Fact Magazine the 20 best albums of 2007
#04 Chinese Restaurant In The Forest top 27 of 2007
#04 "Someone Great” - Clash Magazine top 20 tracks of 2007
#04 Treblezine.com top 50 albums of 2007
#05 Mojo Magazine Class of 2007
#05 Rough Trade Shops top 10 albums of 2007
#05 Time Magazine top 10 albums
#05 Musecology Blog the 30 albums - best of 2007
#05 The Wire Magazine Top 50 Albums of the year
#06 Tiny Mix Tapes favorite albums of 2007
#06 Stereogum.com Gummy Awards - best album of 2007
#07 You Set The scene Blog 2007 top ten albums
#07 "Someone Great" - Pitchfork Top 100 Tracks of the Year Revealed
#07 Entertainment Weekly.com best albums of the year
#08 Los Angels Times / Ann Powers top ten albums of 2007
#09 Muzzle Of Bees.com best albums of 2007
#09 Almostcool.org favorite 20 albums of 2007
#10 "Someone Great” - Delusions of Adequacy10 favorite songs from the year
#11 NME Year-End Critics' Polls '07
#12 Hate Something Beautiful. Com Best of 2007: Best Full-Length Albums
#13 NPR Listeners Pick the Year's Best CDs, From All Songs Considered
#13 "Someone Great” - Gorilla vs. Bear songs of 2007
#15 Reformissionary best albums of 2007
#18 Idolator.com top 50 albums of 2007
#18 Q Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#22 Paste Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#33 Cokemachineglow.com top 50 albums of 2007

THE LODGER Grown-Ups (Slumberland Records)
#62 Amazon.com Best of 2007: Top 100 Editors' Picks

MAMMATUS The Coast Explodes (Holy Mountain)
#8 Casey Rae-Hunter -Dusted Magazine

MATTHEW DEAR Deserter (Ghostly International)
#07 Fact Magazine the 20 best albums of 2007
#08 Clash Magazine Top 10 Leftfield Albums of The Year
#10 CMJ RPM charts
#35 Treblezine.com top 50 albums of 2007
#38 "Deserter " - Pitchfork Top 100 tracks of the year revealed
#45 Mojo Magazine Class of 2007
#48 How's The Pie? Blog top 50 albums of 2007
#77 Amazon.com Best of 2007: Top 100 Editors' Picks
"Elementary Lover" - Entertainment Weekly best songs of the year list
Nominated for a Plug Award - Electronic Album of The Year
Pitchfork - Named on multiple staff members Individual Track lists with "Deserter" and "Asa Breed"

MELT BANANA Bambi's Dilemma (A-Zap)
#17 Decibel Magazine top 40 for 2007

MURCOF Cosmos (Leaf)
#05 The Wire Magazine Electronica genre of the year
Honorable mention favorite 20 albums of 2007 - Almostcool.org

NEUROSIS Given To The Rising (Neurot Recordings)
#03 Pitchfork guest list best of 2007: Bruce Lamont, Yakuza
#05 Allmusic Blog favorite metal albums of 2007
#06 Revolver Magazine Top 20 for 2007
#06 Decibel Magazine Top 40 for 2007
#09 PopMatters.com 20 best metal albums of 2007
Nominated for a PLUG Award for Best Metal Album of 2007

PAPERCUTS Can't Go Back (Gnomonsong)
#05 BWANK! Blog top ten of 2007
#05 Pitchfork guest list best of 2007: Beach House
#44 My Old Kentucky Blog: Dodge's favorite 50 albums of 2007
#75 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07

PINK REASON Cleaning the Mirror (Siltbreeze)
#15 Tiny Mix Tapes favorite albums of 2007

POP LEVI Return To Form Black Magick Party (Ninja Tune)
#15 March on Electric Children Blog top 15 albums of 2007

PYLON Gyrate (DFA)
#03 Other Music top 25 reissues of the year

JAY REATARD Blood Visions (In The Red)
#9 Other Music's Top 25 albums of the year

RIO EN MEDIO Bride of Dynamite (Gnomonsong)
NPR.org Top Ten Genre-Busting Records for 2007

SONIC YOUTH Daydream Nation 4XLP box set (Smells Like Records)
#05 Popmatters.com best reissues of 2007
#05 Mojo Magazine top ten reissues of the year

STARS OF LID And Their Refinement Of The Decline (Kranky)
#10 Cokemachineglow.com top 50 albums of 2007
#12 Almostcool.org favorite 20 albums of 2007
#33 Stylus Magazine top 50 albums of 2007
#43 Pitchfork top 50 albums of 2007

STRATEGY Future Rock (Kranky)
#14 The Wire Magazine Top 50 Albums of the year
#45 Stylus Magazine top 50 albums of 2007

MARK SULTAN Sultanic Verses (In The Red)
#89 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07

THEE MORE SHALLOWS Book of Bad Breaks (Anticon)
#5 Beth Lisick's 2007 Pick for the SF Weekly

TIMES NEW VIKING Present the Paisley Reich (Siltbreeze)
#53 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07
#96 "Teenage Lust!" - Pitchfork Top 100 tracks of the year revealed

TORCHE In Return (Robotic Empire)
#09 Exclaim! Magazine Aggressive Tendencies: Year in Review 2007
#34 Decibel Magazine Top 40 for 2007

VALET Blood Is Clean (Kranky)
#01 Mike McGonigal (yeti magazine)
#08 Boston Citypaper

VENETIAN SNARES My Downfall (Original Soundtrack) (Planet Mu)
#30 Bleep.com top 50 albums of 2007

LUKE VIBERT & JEAN-JACQUES PERREY Moog Acid (Planet Mu)
#36 Bleep.com top 50 albums of 2007

WHITE WILLIAMS Smoke (Tigerbeat6)
#11 Chinese Restaurant In The Forest top 27 of 2007
#49 “Violator” - Gorilla vs. Bear songs of 2007
#49 The Sky Report best of 2007 - album of the year
#71 Poptarts Suck Toasted Blog top 100 albums of '07

WHY? The Hollows EP (Anticon)
#13 Daniel Levin Becker Dusted Magazine

WOODEN SHJIPS Shjips S/t (Holy Mountain)
#03 David Frick / Rolling Stone top 5 albums of 2007
#04 Piccadilly Records top 30 albums of the year
#07 Rough Trade Shops Top 10 Albums of 2007
#43 The WIRE Magazine 50 Best albums of 2007

WOODS At Rear House (Shrimper)
#94 Boomkat our favourite 100 albums for 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

Vashti Bunyan Compilation, Single & Shindig Footage

Check out Uncut Magazine's review of the upcoming Vashti Bunyan early recordings compilation. Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind will be released on double CD and deluxe gatefold sleeve double vinyl at the end of October. In advance of the compilation release DiCristina has reissued a limited pressing of Vashti's debut 7” single of 'Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind' / 'I Want To Be Alone' which was originally released on the Decca label. Both songs were written by rock alumni Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and feature the then session musicians Jimmy Page & John freakin-Mahavishnu-McLaughlin. Below are two great promo clips of Vashti Bunyan appearing on Shindig to promote the single. Good stuff.