British folk singer Vashti Bunyan didn't influence the current [insert modifier here]-folk trend in indie rock so much as anticipate it. There's no way to know if records by Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom would sound any different had Bunyan never recorded Just Another Diamond Day in 1970, but songs from her lone album certainly sound fantastic sandwiched between cuts from Nino Rojo and The Milk-Eyed Mender. The record's spare production helps keep it from dating, but what really works today is Bunyan's soft, fragile Peter Pan voice. I imagine her understated whisper sounded out of step in its own time but now it sounds like a founding document of a certain school of indie singing.
Bunyan's return to music after three decades away has been a gradual stroll back to the center stage. Guesting on records from Piano Magic and Devendra Banhart, she hooked up with Animal Collective while they were in London last year to sing lead on three new songs, which, combined with a sound collage by the Geologist, make up this short EP. It's not as immediately obvious a pairing as the Banhart duet on Rejoicing in the Hands because Animal Collective's focus changes so radically from record to record and its priorities sometimes shift from "songs" per se to something else entirely. A thread through the band's work to this point has been a focus on the emotional content of sound, apart from the nuts and bolts of the music. Even with an acoustic and relatively pop record like Sung Tongs the textural fixations remain, if only in the droney guitar sum that's become something of an Animal Collective trademark. How Bunyan's approach would mesh wasn't entirely clear.
Prospect Hummer turns out to be an inspired meeting, as Animal Collective's material meets her Just Another Diamond Day aesthetic halfway. The common ground for everyone involved turns out to be the small details and pastoral mood of rural life. Hearing the familiar guitar swells that opens "It's You" brings us immediately back to the screened porch where Campfire Songs was recorded, while the presence of Bunyan's voice transports to a different but equally remote place. It's like suddenly finding a cluster of Maryland pines rooted on an English moor, something out of a dreamy film, with a vaporous melody that wants to drift up to the stars. The EP's title song is filmic in a different way, conjuring 30s Disney, Bunyan the graceful Snow White with Animal Collective's faithful dwarves trailing merrily behind, with a "wah-wah-wah" chorus that's certainly a marching tune. Words are hard to make out but something like "loved to run up the tree branch/ And in the middle of it is a puddle of water/ Wind of faithful voices" covers three of the four elements in short order.
The Geologist provides the fire, though it's more of a low-level simmer, on his instrumental "Baleen Sample". He wasn't there for the London sessions but his five-minute contribution serves as a contrast with the three vocal songs, incorporating the strummed acoustic but layering in sound effects and various other instruments (nice use of steel drum) to create something comparatively dense. The brief and playful "I Remember Learning How to Dive" has the band singing in unison with Bunyan, ending the record on an appropriately communal note. It's a short EP, in fact it could almost fit onto a 7-inch single, but Prospect Hummer doesn't waste a note or a breathy sigh.
