Pastoral priestesses

Vashti Bunyan and Kate Bush float back from seclusion to cast spells.

'LA LA- la-la-la, la la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la."

Vashti Bunyan's "Diamond Day" just might contain the loveliest use of one of pop's favorite nonsense sounds. Singing those "la"s, Bunyan's voice follows the sonic bread crumbs of a melody already scattered by an acoustic guitar and a whistle – the overall effect is something like following a maiden over some Hobbit-style knoll into a hidden magical realm.

Released in 1970, Just Another Diamond Day (DiCristina Stair) suggested an eccentric and more interesting version of doe-eyed Marianne Faithfull. It's unsurprising, since Bunyan was another Andrew Loog Oldham protégé, but one who – unlike the then-obedient and a bit vacuous Faithfull – left the Svengali and other sinister masculine influences behind to follow her muse into the farmlands, with Joe Boyd of Fairport Convention at her command. The lullaby of Bunyan's "Lily Pond" and the floating cries of her "Iris's Song" aren't far removed from Kathleen Ferrer's a cappella "Ma Bonny Lad" reverie; elsewhere, the melancholic folk of 1967's Chelsea Girl comes to mind, though it goes without saying that Bunyan's voice skips and hops through the moors with a bit more sprightly grace than Nico's, making odd portraits of glow worms, grubs, and swallows seem like beautiful folk standards.

For 35 winters, springs, summers, and falls, Just Another Diamond Day was Bunyan's only album, but now – after a recent guest appearance on Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands and an EP-length collaboration with the Animal Collective – comes Lookaftering (DiCristina Stair), an 11-song collection that recaptures the sound and magical air of Bunyan's debut to a degree that's uncanny. Faithfull may sound like Gollum's mom, but for Bunyan, not a second seems to have passed. It would be 1970 all over again if her music wasn't timeless – spanning the medieval and the modern – to begin with. The song that kicks off the album, "Lately," doesn't have the instant catchiness of "Diamond Day," but it's just as effective at sending a chill down one's spine. I haven't heard anything as beautiful in this whole aged year.

Bunyan's three-and-a-half-decade absence makes the 12 years that separate fellow pastoral femme Kate Bush's new album, Aerial (Columbia), from her previous one, The Red Shoes, seem short. Bush has always been more enamored of modern production touches than Bunyan, but the slick gloss of Aerial's sound and the kiss-intimate treatment of her vocals are little different from on 1985's Hounds of Love (a marvel of the CD era's early days), if not the warped prog rock madness of 1982's The Dreaming. Bush is a great deal more subdued these days – no more hee-hawing like a mule or calling out for Heathcliff, though she does address Elvis on "King of the Mountain" and imitate the sounds of laundry being washed on the still rather subdued "Mrs. Bartolozzi," the kind of tune that proves she was pounding the ivories in the midst of a true artist's crazy fantasyland long before terrible Tori Amos contrived to follow her there (frankly, Ms. Amos has never found the front door).

Bush still can't pass up a concept, dividing Aerial into two sections and discs, "A Sea of Honey" and "A Sky of Honey." Stevie Nicks would be jealous of "How to Be Invisible"<\!q>'s slinky spell-casting, but the first disc is at its best when stripped down to simple piano-and-voice arrangements, such as on the gorgeous "A Coral Room." A more unified – if perhaps not as strong – group of compositions, the second disc wastes no time traveling to a different type of birdland than Charlie Parker's. Throughout, Bush tosses in references and tributes to her children, from a ballad to her son ("Bertie") to the pictures of them that decorate the pages of Aerial's lyric booklet.

The mommy factor definitely unites Bush and Bunyan, who also includes a picture of two kids with her album. In fact, Bunyan's daughter Whyn Lewis plays a major role in the sleeve art of Lookaftering, contributing a series of stark, odd animal paintings – depicting a fox-strong rabbit and a few sly greyhounds – that suit the music quite well. Of course, the contributions that many people will note come from Banhart (a flourish of steel acoustic guitar during "Wayward") and Joanna Newsom (harp on "Against the Sky"), but they're small elements on an album that oh so gently suggests none of today's neo-folkies have managed to match the delicate grace of Bunyan.

Certainly the abstract gusts of sound that dominate Bunyan's inferior return with Animal Collective don't hint at the lyricism and compositional depth found on Lookaftering. Here she's no mere ingredient in a soundscape but the central creative force whom the rest of the album's instrumentalists serve, adding chamber piece codas to more than one track. Bringing back the signature recorder or whistle sound of "Diamond Day," the ballad "Hidden" is especially poignant, but just one of many instances in which she strips away the nature imagery of her debut album to dig into a more personal form of address.

Just Another Diamond Day started with a chain of "la-la"s. Lookaftering concludes with one long "hmmm" – on the track "Wayward Hum," which captures unawares Bunyan's singing and strumming midrehearsal. Back then and now, Bunyan has known – and shown – that an enchanting melody can run deeper than the heaviest word.