People tend to flag up The Blue Nile’s Scottishness, as if geography and accidents of birth were responsible for artistic vision; but surely, again like Hopper, the dreams and tears here are universal. The city streets, cars, rooftops, rain, couples and love documented and expressed so delicately throughout the seven songs are potentially everywhere, any time, “caught up in this big rhythm”. This is why the band stood out then and hover above now; both everymen and angels. Heim, Chris (15 March 1990). "Blue Nile: Hats (A & M)". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 24 October 2015. Hats was voted number 345 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). [24] Q placed Hats at number 92 on its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever" in 2000 and at number 38 on its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s" in 2006. [25] [26] Legacy [ edit ] To listen closely to the Blue Nile is to become a part of the scenery. In this way, Buchanan’s metaphor about the time between albums comes alive. The long gestation of each record suggests, as in the early stages of a relationship, a sharpening of the senses, getting lost in a world that’s getting smaller around you. You want to do it right this time. The Blue Nile’s music also sounds like falling in love, slow and starry-eyed, with melodies that fizzle and glow like streetlights. By the time they released their sophomore album, Hats, in the autumn of 1989, Buchanan was 33 years old, and his songs, once littered with bold declarations of love, now seemed to be composed entirely of ellipses and question marks. Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band.

For anyone looking to build their career and see the world moving forward at a frantic pace, they are instructed to live in the city, but few remember to tell of how mentally foreboding the prospect can be. Though the extreme condensity is thrilling from a newcomer’s perspective, everyone eventually feels that overwhelming entrapment, simultaneously compressed and left alone. Glaswegian band The Blue Nile, and particularly frontman and musical director Paul Buchanan, are deeply entrenched with this experience.

Companies, etc.

Sodomsky, Sam (27 November 2018). "The 1975's Matty Healy Dissects Every Song on A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 11 January 2021 . Retrieved 23 February 2021. Larkin, Colin (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rded.). London: Virgin Books. p.137. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6. In more recent years, their name seems to keep reappearing — maybe not more frequently, exactly, but perhaps a new generation is finding them. Or, as impossible as it seems for anyone to sound like the Blue Nile, maybe their influence is more significant this time around. Artists with as much history as Destroyer and as freshly exciting as Westerman have been compared to them. The 1975’s Matty Healy has talked about listening to Hats constantly while crafting last year’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships; this year, Natasha Khan, an artist obviously well-versed in the ’80s, mentioned discovering them for the first time while working on the new Bat For Lashes album Lost Girls. Pure Bathing Culture covered the entirety of Hats last year; they were joined by Ben Gibbard on a couple songs. A couple months later, fellow Scots Chvrches offered their own rendition of “The Downtown Lights.” And Buchanan still reemerges as a co-writer from time to time, most recently on Jessie Ware’s Glasshouse in 2017. a b Edwards, D. M. (31 January 2013). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops / Hats". PopMatters . Retrieved 10 March 2013.

a b "The Blue Nile | Awards". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 22 March 2015 . Retrieved 4 July 2013. Despite recurring spikes of interest and occasional attempts at exposing more listeners to the catalog — expanded remasters of their albums appeared earlier this decade, and new vinyl reissues were recently announced — there is something about the Blue Nile that makes them feel as if they will always be a secret buried in time. They’re the sort of transfixing and elusive artist where, when you first discover them, you will alternate between telling everyone you’ve ever known about them with the fervor of an evangelist, and retreating to protect this precious thing you have found. There’s a way in which their music can very much feel like its your own, not to be shared with anyone. That you can only discuss it with the sort of hushed awe from which it seems to be born. s A Walk Across the Rooftops remains unique in its fusion of chilly technology and a pitch of confessional, romantic soul that ‘alternative’ types would usually shy away from for fear it wasn’t ‘cool’. It was always (at least) two things at once: in the years since, its peerless power to affect has accrued multiple layers of rueful resonance.a b Roberts, David, ed. (2006). Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p.66. ISBN 978-1-904994-10-7.

Other moments are equally reserved for thoughts about escaping the concrete jungle, such as ‘Headlights on the Parade’. Though lyrically not as dense, the instrumental paints the tale symmetrically, via a locomotive beat and elastic bass that together carry a cross-country momentum. All the while, elevated strings and an uplifting piano brings the type of excited peppiness that comes from venturing out in search of fresh surroundings. Hats (CD liner notes). The Blue Nile (remastereded.). Virgin Records. 2012. LKHCDR 2. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) While their influence has long run deep, with outspoken fans including Vashti Bunyan, Phil Collins, and the 1975, to this day nothing sounds quite like Hats. The Blue Nile themselves never quite replicated it, opting for a loose, soulful atmosphere on 1996’s Peace At Last and a more sober approach for 2004’s High. Its closest companion is Paul Buchanan’s 2012 solo album Mid Air—a collection of near-demos on piano that further refined his sunken vignettes. “Tear stains on your pillow,” he sings in “Wedding Party,” “I was drunk when I danced with the bride.” The stories—as with most concerning the Blue Nile—are between the lines. Hats (CD liner notes). The Blue Nile. Linn Records. 1989. LKHCD2. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) Tavakoli, Mina (20 November 2020). "Almost anarchy: The Style Council and the smooth sounds of sophisti-pop". The Washington Post . Retrieved 21 April 2021.Stay and Heatwave are heroically restrained; Easter Parade and Automobile Noise are elegies full of ghosts and blood. The previously unreleased St. Catherine’s Day is as sad and beautiful as can be. Both this and Hats still take the top of your head off, gently. The story about Hats, and the Blue Nile in general, is uncustomary, though it began normally enough: While attending the University Of Glasgow, Paul Buchanan, PJ Moore, and Robert Bell tried to start a couple different bands, none of which took. Eventually, they became the Blue Nile and, this being the punk era, set about trying to make music with the rudimentary gear and means they had at their disposal. In a roundabout way — through their engineer Calum Malcolm — they caught the ear of a hi-fi audio equipment company called Linn Products, which was in the process of starting a record label. Their debut, 1984’s A Walk Across The Rooftops, was the first release on Linn Records.

Murray, Robin (20 November 2012). "Tinseltown In The Rain: The Blue Nile". ClashMusic.com . Retrieved 10 March 2013. More importantly, as has been reaffirmed on this year’s stripped-down solo psalm Mid Air, Paul Buchanan’s enraptured voice and words capture the essence of hearts breaking and healing as well as anyone outside Tamla Motown’s heyday. Holden, Stephen (30 July 1990). "Review/Pop; The Blue Nile's Mystical, Majestic Ballads". The New York Times. New York . Retrieved 7 February 2023. Hats is the second studio album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, originally released on 16 October 1989 on Linn Records and A&M Records. Pitchfork Staff (10 September 2018). "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s". Pitchfork . Retrieved 24 April 2023. The results aren't far off from the romantic synth-pop that ascended the charts in the '80s...In a 2012 interview with ClashMusic.com, Buchanan reflected on the time lost trying to make the album: I have the same Nimbus copy, bought in The Netherlands when I lived there. I just ripped it, and no problems. I'm listening on headphones as I type, no issues. Their debut album, A Walk Across the Rooftops, arrived in 1984 via the stereo equipment company Linn, who were looking to expand their reach by starting a label. (“Linn weren’t a record company and we weren’t a band,” Buchanan would later reflect in Elliot J. Huntley and Edith Hall’s biography From a Late Night Train.) Still, their unusual working relationship allowed the members of the Blue Nile to record in Linn’s studios and operate without a strict deadline. As so often happens with our first brushes of love, the band chased this experience the rest of their career. No pressure and no expectations—a creative process they could be instinctive about.