‘Heartleap’ is Vashti Bunyan's long-awaited third LP, the follow-up to 2005's Lookaftering. It was written, recorded, edited, arranged and played largely by Vashti herself in her Edinburgh home studio over the past 7 years, it is a unique and entrancing collection of 10 songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album.
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 Edinburgh home studio over the past 7 years, ‘Heartleap’ is a unique and entrancing collection of 10 songs forming what Vashti is adamant will be her final album.
This third album follows her rediscovery – after thirty years in the wilderness – with the 2000 re-release of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ (a 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’. ‘Heartleap’ has a classic sound and sees her deliver an album 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 reveals an artist at her peak, capturing her songs within fluid settings that masterfully marry content and form.
A more personal record, ‘Heartleap’ stands 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. It is ultimately a less mediated record, and one that Vashti feels is far closer to the vision she set out to realise.
Review:
It's been nine years since Vashti Bunyan released her sophomore album,
Lookaftering. When contrasted with the three and a half decades between it and
her classic 1970 debut, Just Another Diamond Day, it seems like a blip. Bunyan
has said in an interview that Heartleap will be her final album. That it sums up
everything she has to say. For those who take in these tender, poignant songs
about relationships (familial and interpersonal), life's experiences, and
reflections, this is sad news. Bunyan produced and edited Heartleap herself;
this is a first. She plays the guitar well enough, but though piano appears
throughout, Bunyan doesn't play the instrument. She carefully assembled these
parts, from single notes. While her use of the synthesizer was discouraged and
put aside on her last offering, here it unobtrusively sits with organic strings,
guitars, piano, and an occasional recorder. Despite the intense focus and years
of recording, and contributions from other artists sent from as far away as New
York and Los Angeles, Heartleap flows dreamily from the outset. “Across the
Water” contrasts notions of being stuck emotionally and then becoming unstuck,
free to live the life of one's choosing; Jo Mango's kalimba adds an earthy
resonance. “Holy Smoke” – with a subtle backing chorus from Devendra
Banhart – allows Gareth Dickson's ghostly, melodic electric guitar to
support the airy yet determined vocal about refusing to allow grief and sorrow
to claim the joy in one's life. “Mother,” with its gently cascading,
doubled piano lines and ghostly strings, is perhaps the set's most beautiful
track, offering the memory of catching her own mother dancing, singing, and
playing the piano in the precious few moments she had to herself apart from her
daily duties. “Gunpowder” reflects on an at times complex communication in a
continuing relationship with a former lover. The staggered and layered wordless
harmonies that introduce “Here” are haunting; they underscore the quietly
expressed but nonetheless real fear of abandonment articulated in its lyric. The
closing title track is named for the cover illustration (Hart's Leap by her
daughter, Whyn Lewis). Each line in the song begins with the word “heart.”
It takes in the entire cycle of love, joy, loss, grief, and the marks each
leaves upon one as time passes. The melody, comprised of single piano notes and
fingerpicked acoustic guitar, underscores a tome that feels captured in the
moment. It's as if Bunyan wondered what might transpire once she uttered these
words. The recording is her witness. The entirety of Heartleap is wispy, spare,
understated, and moving in its insight and honesty. But this song – and the
compassion and empathy with which it expresses the enormity of these emotions in
the cycle of life – is perhaps the most piercing and affirmative in the lot.
If there has to be a final statement from Bunyan, this painstaking, sometimes
hesitant, and always brave and vulnerable one is not only fitting, but essential
in comprehending the totality of her life's work.
All Music Guide – Thom Jurek