Rolling Stone (p.137) - 3.5 stars out of 5 --"[A]t the time of these rarities, Bunyan was part Joan Baez, part Marianne Faithfull, with a virginal alto floating through PET SOUNDS-like madrigals."
Uncut (p.125) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "'Winter Is Blue', an unreleased single from 1966, is an eerie, baroque number that might not be out of place on an early Joni Mitchell album..."
The Wire (p.53) - "[O]n more sparsely arranged tracks such as the 1966 single 'Train Song', the wispy melodies and nonchalant picking style of DIAMOND DAY emerge."
Vashti Bunyan became one of indie music's most unlikely comeback heroines in the early 2000s when her fame as both the female answer to Nick Drake and an authentic Luddite gained traction with hip young music fans via the reissue of her classic JUST ANOTHER DIAMOND DAY and her '05 collaboration with Animal Collective, HUMMER. SOME THINGS JUST STICK IN YOUR MIND collects singles and rarities from 1964 to 1967, the years before she famously hitched a wagon to a mule and went back to nature.
Disc one of the collection finds her simple songs and delicate vocals adorned with a rustic-baroque touch courtesy of Rolling Stones producer Andrew Oldham. The brew here is subtle but contains the same magic as DIAMOND DAY, whose song "Winter Is Blue" is included here in an embryonic form, along with the Jagger/Richards-penned title track. Disc two features Bunyan's strongest suit: just herself and her guitar delivering delicate lullabies of solitude. Standouts here include the childlike "I Know" and the devastating "Find My Heart Again."