BSAT Round #2: Vashti Bunyan vs. Kendrick Lamar

[Jjjoniee]

[BrandonMiaow]

Vashti is sometimes my spirit animal. Other times it is Grimes. But Kendrick Lamar makes really good music, first hip-hop album to make me cry. Vashti doesn't make me cry (well Brother comes close) but that doesn't mean she is worse, far from it. Her music is a love song to life. Just because the pastoral scenery it evokes is probably hard to find, it doesn't mean the feelings it evokes are also hard to find. Glow Worms is my favourite of the tracks because it tells of living life in the present and enjoying it and being happy despite sadness in the past...it's just so poignant and so beautiful. Just Another Diamond Day isn't simply a cutesy pastoral record. That's what draws you in, of course, but what keeps you there is the absolute beauty and innocence and love. No irony or cynicism.
It's got that human presence, beyond music or genres or what's in at the time (I find a lot of good late sixties early seventies music has this feeling). It's like the beauty of the hippie sort of vibe except it manages to avoid the scoffs of "Ha, what a cliche, no one can honestly be this naive, ha, ha, ha, I'm going to go listen to Death Grips and Kanye West, the ones who see life as it really is, ha, ha" (that's a music critic, I call him Frederick)
And then Lookaftering, we have an almost wintery poignancy. It is really striking how much the two albums literally contrast as spring/summer and winter/autumn. Lookaftering almost downplays the beauty we found on JADD, though it is easy to keep them separate...kind of like how winter makes spring seem so far away, but then...it is spring again before you know it. It is a sort of record of looking back on life, and looking after what you have in this world. I still think Vashti has that youthful beauty in her, it's just a bit more tempered and reserved. But, after all, the first record isn't about being in a perpetual state of bliss, rather holding those memories "in the depth of care", which she is doing in Lookaftering. Ramble ramble ramble. Vashti is amazing.