Heartleap cover

Heartleap

Released

Inspiration comes when it comes, and Vashti Bunyan has always been happy to let it take its sweet time. There was a 35 year gap between her first and second albums, and then another nine years before this — her greatest record — came out in 2014. Her first self-produced record, it sounds incredibly minimal on first listen: her haiku-reductionist lyrics matching the purity of her voice, with fingerpicked guitar, electric piano and flute like synths making the simplest of repetitions. But in fact the waves of sound and image that build up in the introduction of these things are incredibly complex, with immense depths beneath the surface. It’s a record you can listen to forever, never get to the bottom of, but always appreciate as if brand new each time. Given she published an equally enthralling memoir in 2022, just after her 77th birthday, it’s clear she is still as full as inspiration as ever — so who knows what might follow.

Joe Muggs

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