Fat-Cat Records 
Vashti Bunyan : Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind -2cd-(UK,1964-1967,pub.2007)***°
From the moment Vashti Bunyan’s first release was officially reissued, she was able to take a second chance with her career, when being adopted by the Fat-Cat label, with some new recordings. The press shared an overall enthusiasm. Before her classic 1970 album she had recorded several singles of which only two were really published. Fatcat now have collected these recordings. Most of them are from around 1966. Also included on a second CD is Vasthi’s earliest 12 track demo tape from 1964.
The single takes are from different Times compared to 1970, so these sessions are also arranged differently, and can be compared more to the innocence of let’s say early Marianne Faithful singles, while I also slightly associate her with the early singles from Mary Hopkin. Marianne Faithful had a comparable innocence in her voice, and character, which for the last one unfortunately led to some abuse at the time when involved with Mick Jagger (he wrote “under my thumb” as a reaction to feelings about her, but that is a different story). Vasthi Bunyan for that reason was more lucky. Also she was given a Mick Jagger/Keith Richards song, "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," for the Decca single. Both the official singles (1965 & 1966) were arranged well, while the Colombia single was a bit closer to the folk core of what would lead to her final first and only album (until her reemergance), where these 2 tracks of the last single were also going to appear. “Coldest Night of the year”, from the unreleased single, is much more 60s pop flavoured with the kind of elements and arrangements of hits from around those days. "Winter Is Blue," (also to be appear on the later LP), could be found at first on the soundtrack of the Peter Whitehead documentary film “Tonight Let's All Make Love in London”. This track is taken from a restored acetate. Most of the left-over tracks are just guitar and voice.
The second CD, with the 1964 demo recordings, is very stripped bare with guitar, and this makes them sound fragile in this form, while the singing itself keeps them in balance. The songs themselves sound more like songs to be discovered, that still need a certain process to be made your own (sing them along, cover them, listen more closely) before being able to go well beyond their vulnerable recording form. It is nice to hear and realize where finally history had led Vasthi Bunyan to.
