Vashti Bunyan: Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind

Label: Dicristina

So, it turns out that the hipsters’ favorite obscure English folkie wasn’t exactly a folkie after all. “I was never a folksinger, although I may have written some folk-inspired songs,” Bunyan writes in her booklet note. “I was always a lover of pop music and my greatest dream was to break into the charts as a girl with guitar and a sad little love song.” For proof, there’s this two-disc compilation of her earliest work: her first studio recordings (1964 solo demos), her two 1965-66 singles produced by Andrew Loog Oldham (including the title track, written by Jagger and Richards), some singles unreleased at the time, and various 1966-67 demo tapes and acetates. No matter what the context, she sounds adorable throughout, and honestly there’s nothing here that, 40 years later, sounds remotely like an artistic compromise. (Steve)