#255 vashti bunyan – wayward

During her set at the Esplanade Concert Hall last night, Vashti Bunyan lightheartedly introduced “Wayward” as a song she wrote about how she doesn’t quite enjoy doing housework. More specifically, this song off her wonderful second album Lookaftering (2005) seems to be written by someone coming to terms with domestic life but who still reminisces about being “the one with road dust on my boots”, the sentimental melody of “Wayward” quietly yearning for the idealized sense of wandering rootlessness captured on her now much-revered debut Just Another Diamond Day (1970). I can never quite pin down why this gentlest of folk songs always sounds so mesmerizing – perhaps it is Vashti’s wispy voice, the kind that so effortlessly captivates the mind, or it is the pastel shades of buried regret in her understated performance last night, ending the song with a simple lament: “All I ever wanted was a road without end”. – keith.

mp3: vashti bunyan – wayward