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**Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering**
★★★★☆

In the pantheon of folk music's most enigmatic figures, few stories are as compelling as Vashti Bunyan's decades-long journey from obscurity to cult reverence and back to creative vitality. Her 2005 album "Lookaftering" stands as both a miraculous resurrection and a testament to the enduring power of her gossamer-thin voice and deeply personal songwriting—a stunning return that proved lightning could indeed strike twice in the same gentle place.

To understand the magnitude of "Lookaftering," one must first appreciate the extraordinary circumstances of Bunyan's career trajectory. After releasing the now-legendary "Just Another Diamond Day" in 1970 to complete commercial indifference, she essentially vanished from the music world, retreating to rural Scotland to raise her family. For thirty-five years, her sole album existed as a whispered secret among collectors and folk purists, its pastoral beauty growing in stature while its creator remained silent. By the early 2000s, when artists like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom began citing her influence, "Just Another Diamond Day" had achieved the kind of mythical status usually reserved for lost recordings, not lost careers.

Then came "Lookaftering"—a title that perfectly encapsulates Bunyan's approach to both music and life. The album feels like a gentle exhale after holding one's breath for decades, its ten tracks suffused with the wisdom that comes from choosing silence and returning to speech only when you truly have something to say. Musically, Bunyan picks up precisely where she left off, as if the intervening years were merely an extended pause between verses of the same eternal song.

The album's finest moments showcase an artist whose voice has aged like fine wine—thinner perhaps, but more concentrated in its emotional impact. "Here Before" opens the proceedings with crystalline guitar fingerpicking and Bunyan's trademark whispered vocals, immediately establishing that her gift for creating intimate sonic spaces remains intact. The song's meditation on time and place sets the album's contemplative tone, while subtle string arrangements add layers of melancholy beauty without overwhelming her delicate delivery.

"Wayward" emerges as perhaps the album's masterpiece, a seven-minute journey that builds from solo voice and guitar to include cello, violin, and piano in a gradual crescendo that never loses its essential fragility. Here, Bunyan reflects on paths taken and untaken with the perspective of someone who chose the road less traveled and lived to tell the tale. The song's extended instrumental passages feel like musical representations of memory itself—meandering, beautiful, and tinged with gentle sadness.

"Same But Different" and "Against the Sky" further demonstrate Bunyan's remarkable ability to find profound meaning in simple observations. Her lyrics remain deceptively straightforward, often focusing on natural imagery and domestic scenes, yet they carry the weight of lived experience. When she sings about gardens, children, or changing seasons, she's really exploring themes of growth, loss, and the passage of time with the subtlety of a master poet.

The album's production, handled by Bunyan herself along with collaborators including pianist Gareth Dickson, strikes the perfect balance between preservation and progression. While remaining true to the sparse, organic aesthetic that made "Just Another Diamond Day" so special, "Lookaftering" incorporates contemporary recording techniques that add depth without sacrificing intimacy. The result sounds both timeless and immediate, ancient and modern.

"Lookaftering" solidified Bunyan's unlikely second act and influenced a new generation of indie folk artists who found inspiration in her proof that artistic integrity could triumph over commercial considerations. The album's success led to increased recognition for her earlier work and positioned her as a bridge between folk music's past and its contemporary revival.

While Bunyan would go on to release 2014's "Heartleap," completing an unexpected late-career trilogy, "Lookaftering" remains the crown jewel of her renaissance—an album that shouldn't exist but does, created by an artist who disappeared and returned with her gifts not just intact but somehow enhanced by the silence. In an industry obsessed with youth and novelty, Vashti Bunyan's gentle revolution reminds us that some voices only grow more essential with time, and that the most powerful music often comes from those who sing not because they must, but because they choose to.