Released - 1970
Genre - Psychedelic Folk
Producer - Joe Boyd
Selected Personnel - Vashti Bunyan (Vocals/Guitar); Christopher Sykes (Piano/Organ); Robin Williamson (Fiddle/Irish Harp/Whistle); Dave Swarbrick (Fiddle/Mandolin); Simon Nicol (Banjo); Mike Crowther (Guitar); John James (Dulcitone)
Standout Track - Diamond Day
I should probably go about formally introducing some of the supporting characters in this blog, because there are certain figures who are going to crop up with semi-regularity. Other than my immediate family, all of whom have always had a huge influence on my musical tastes and upbringing, there are three principal figures in my life who have had significant and repeated input into my musical education. The first is Jack, the guy I've mentioned a lot who stoked my love of classic rock and prog at university. The second is Emily, who set up a cultural exchange with me that's been going for several years and got me to appreciate folk music with a greater passion than in my younger days. The third is Frith, who was the friend who inadvertently opened up Peter Sarstedt and CocoRosie to me. Vashti Bunyan is one of Frith's. At some point in 2007 or 2008, during my first year at uni, one of my habitual visits to Frith's halls happened to have for its soundtrack a few songs of Vashti's, which at the time I paid little attention to, dismissing it as "typical Frith music," ethereal and airy folk that I was only listening to with half an ear. At the time, I was still an unabashed fan of pop rock, and it wasn't until perhaps a year later that my musical interests had steered me towards more artistically credible material that I suddenly remembered Vashti and decided to make it my mission to track her work down and see if I could learn to appreciate it now that my tastes had matured somewhat. I was rewarded with one of the finest folk musicians the world has ever seen.
There's a very elusive quality that some music manages to achieve, and that's timelessness. By that, I don't necessarily mean music that doesn't age - listening to Just Another Diamond Day certainly feels like establishing a connection with a long-forgotten past, but my point is that this music doesn't really even sound like it belongs to any specific time, other than the fact that it's definitely not the present. Even in 1970, this would surely have had the same strange, antiquated, mythic quality, the sense that this was music not from a recording studio but from the earth or the air or the sea itself. It's a remarkable, intangible essence dancing somewhere between Vashti's breathy, starry-eyed vocals and the simple, elegant acoustic arrangements or the simple, hummable melodies - this is music from the dawn of time, deeply uncynical, heart-warmingly sincere and honest and plain. I find it difficult to really put my finger on what makes this record feel so effortlessly natural and ethereal, like something that's been conjured rather than composed, but it's one of the most beautiful folk relics of all time, and one that's rightly gone on to inspire a huge amount of the contemporary new folk scene, with the likes of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom taking inspiration from her legacy.
It took time for Vashti to discover this critical adoration and immortality, though - in 1970, this was practically ignored. Vashti had dabbled in singing and songwriting since the mid-60s before (in a move that comes as not even remotely surprising in its charming antiquity for anybody familiar with her music) relocating to the Hebrides by horse and cart to write and record Just Another Diamond Day. There was no other place this album could possibly have been written than on a remote island in a horse-drawn cart, it's music a million miles away from the real world and all the better for it. These songs might not be hugely relevant or deeply personal, but they rap into a kind of mythic, folkloric sensibility that doesn't need aching personal insight or political commentary to strike a chord in the listener. There are songs about animals, about travel, about weather and nature, all enlivened by Vashti's stunningly beautiful voice and simple arrangements for acoustic guitars, fiddles and whistles. The most beautiful is the stunning "Diamond Day," still one of the greatest feel-good songs to listen to on a sunny day, its simple whistle-led melody making it a classic even to this day (even if that is largely due to its use in an advert). "Timothy Grub" is an adorably naive and childish song about the simple lives led by a group of insects, while "Jog Along Bess" treads similar ground, joyfully painting a picture of a simple rustic life told through the stories of the animals surrounding that particular life. The recorder melody of "Rainbow River," a beautifully simple description of a dream landscape in the country, is achingly beautiful, and it's perhaps that song more than any other that sums up this album's sunny disposition - scenes of idyllic pastoral beauty rendered simply, plainly, in their essence, conjuring up the sense of a woman totally at home in the natural world and conveying her adoration for it. "Trawlerman's Song" is a real highlight too, Vashti and her simple guitar strumming telling the story of a sailor returning home to his family.
It's an album that it's very easy to be cynical about - Vashti Bunyan was clearly either ignorant of the socio-political landscape around her, or simply uninterested in it, and she also has little interest in writing songs about personal heartbreak. She's also uninterested in being musically adventurous or daring, and all these qualities were a long way from the musical mainstream of the time, defined as it was chiefly by the political ire of the singer-songwriter movement and the pioneering virtuosity of prog. One can easily look at Just Another Diamond Day and say it's out of touch, old-fashioned, or naive, and all of these would be true. But it's impossible to listen to this album without being utterly charmed by its beauty and its simplicity, and Vashti's voice is so breathy, so intimate and charming that it's never anything other than a pleasure to spend half an hour in her company. Sadly, though it received some critical notice at the time, the paying public at the time were reluctant to agree and, largely due to its sounding so ancient and so far removed from the modern world, it was all but ignored on release, prompting Vashti to decide music wasn't for her and to retire, robbing the world of what could have gone on to be one of the greatest and most important talents in folk music.
Thankfully, though, the story of Vashti's withdrawal from the music scene due to the lacklustre response to her simple, heartfelt folk music has a happy ending, even if it took a long time to get to it. Over the ensuing thirty years, Just Another Diamond Day gradually developed a cult following among folk music fanatics, while Vashti went about living her life and raising her children in complete ignorance of her growing standing as an "elder statesman" of folk music to younger imitators. At the turn of the millennium, when artists such as Devendra Banhart began praising her influence, among other new folk pioneers, it encouraged her to emerge from the musical wilderness and begin working again, collaborating with others including Banhart himself, and even releasing her own second album, Lookaftering, in 2005, thirty-five years after her debut. Her commercial stock exploded even to the point of having "Diamond Day" featured in adverts, and suddenly the rustic beauty of her early work was finally given the attention and the praise it had always deserved.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Vashti Bunyan except where noted.
1. Diamond Day
2. Glow Worms
3. Lily Pond
4. Timothy Grub
5. Where I Like To Stand (Vashti Bunyan & John James)
6. Swallow Song
7. Window Over The Bay (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)
8. Rose Hip November
9. Come Wind Come Rain
10. Hebridean Sun (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)
11. Rainbow River
12. Trawlerman's Song (Vashti Bunyan & Robert Lewis)
13. Jog Along Bess
14. Iris's Song For Us (Vashti Bunyan; Wally Dix & Iris MacFarlane)
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