It's taken 35 years for Bunyan to follow up her revered 1970 debut Just Another Diamond Day. In her absence, Bunyan has developed superfans including Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and electronic man Max Richter, who contribute acoustic guitar, harp and, comparatively raucously, piano to this collection of stunningly simple songs. In Wayward, Bunyan muses how she once wanted to be armed with a suitcase, "the one with road dust on my shoes." But if there's a slight wistfulness, she seems to have found equal potency in anonymous rural escape. With her voice so ethereal and distant it's virtually medieval, Lookaftering as is much 1570 as 1970. Her hushed, magical songs conjure up not so much "a world without end", but one without time at all.
(Fatcat)