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OF ALL the tales told this past year, Vashti Bunyan's story is possibly the strangest. There are many elements to consider: the 35-year-gap between Bunyan's first and second albums, an odyssey which took her from the London of the swinging Sixties to windswept, desolate islands off the coast of Scotland and cameos from Donovan, pop svengali Andrew Loog Oldham, a horse named Bess and a dog called Blue.

It's a strange story with a happy ending. Having spent the last couple of decades raising kids and animals on farms in Scotland and Ireland, Bunyan now calls Edinburgh home. She spends her days fielding calls about her new album, Lookaftering. A bundle of fragile, homespun folk songs, all tied together with streamlined electronic ribbons by producer Max Richter of Blue Notebooks fame, Lookaftering is an album of startling, incandescent beauty.