the blue nile: hats

god that isaac hayes cover

this album was a big deal in my house growing up. My mother is the kind of woman who buys a CD every year - Will Young, Daniel Bedingfield, Ronan Keating - and her then-partner was a Britpop man who also loved dance music. But they both would say this is their favourite album of all time.

I've probably said this before in any number of ILX posts over the years, but one thing that really stands out about The Blue Nile is the reverent or hymnal quality of their songwriting and production, the sense that the songs are gesturing toward something much larger than the band and their private concerns; certainly these songs never feel autobiographical (regardless of whether they in fact are or not, and notwithstanding the recurrent sonic and lyrical motifs which form the group's indelible imprint).

It's rare to find music so personal, so singular, that is not also idiosyncratic in the strong sense of that word, not irrevocably bound up with the personality of its creator(s). Certainly when I think about 80s pop it feels like a lot of material falls on either side of that line, either deeply personal or thoroughly universal; The Blue Nile's songs feel like a communication from one frame of reference to the other.

Kate Bush produced two songs which also walk this tightrope, I think ("Running Up That Hill", "This Woman's Work"). But only two.

With The Blue Nile it's just what they do.

Which is one reason why the band is so routinely covered by other artists relative to their general obscurity.

"Seven A.M." because it goes down a storm with just about any combination of Sade's "Make Some Room," the dub mix of Mr. Fingers' "What About This Love," M.E./Virgo's "School Hall," and the Arthur Baker "Rapid Eye" remix of Will Downing's "In My Dreams."

so much perfect music in one sentence

yeah i would pay ten dollars just to sit somewhere and hear that run, and i'm really poor.

Booming post Tim

That reverent spirit is probably what triggers thoughts of a kinship with talk talk.

Also the feeling of longing which is so distilled it becomes religious and romantic at the same time

yep, and it's romance of a religious order, something you walk through with its own weather and texture, a weighted experience. every feeling almost having an architectural significance, as if they were individual buildings in a city you're walking through

a lot of this is in the form of address of buchanan's lyrics; it's never really a monologue, it mostly seems to be one end of a conversation, whether he's having that conversation with a person or the feeling of that person

with this framing it's a lot less jarring that peace at last ended up being often literally devotional

Was jamming "Sentimental Man" this morning.

the last minute of "downtown lights" :O

― k3vin k.

Yeah, this is one of my favourite moments in music. The way he sings, "I'm tired of crying on the stairs" and then belts out the title gets me every single time.

buchanan's latest solo album has some really great lyrics. he's still very much an interesting lyricist.

Are you talking about Mid Air or did the new one come out?

yeah mid air

Went with 'The Downtown Lights' but holy hell what a ridiculously difficult choice.

i should go back & listen to this again. i remember not being bowled over when tim got me to listen to it years back, but "saturday night" was instantly stunning

i am gonna have to think about it but this album has one of music's greatest one-two punches. so much so i often just play "hillside" and "downtown" on repeat.

sort of worried that "let's go out tonight" isn't getting its due

on first listen i think it might be my fav

the first lines got me. heavy springsteen vibes.

Seven AM cos the last 2 minutes are the best sounding recording of anything ever. so much going on

stoppp, go, stopppp, go, cos i .. doontknoooow

(Saturday Night is probably really my vote but I didnt want to jump on the wagon)

the first lines got me. heavy springsteen vibes.

the springsteen connection feels explicit on high oddly enough, it's one of the few records that's ever reminded me of tunnel of love. "i would never" has the kind of stately delivery of "tougher than the rest" and the same melancholic shadow to its lyrics

I want to like this record a lot but right now I'm having trouble getting past the particularly dated 80s instrumental arrangements/ingredients and relentlessly gloomy vibe. Or maybe not the right kind of gloomy (I normally love gloominess). This is probably a problem I have with certain 80s stylings. I love late Talk Talk and Gigi Masin etc. so maybe I should stick to looking for a way to check out Mid Air in its entirety instead.

great to hear this new release getting some attention, thanks Tim

*cough cough* perenially ignored thread on a v nice Blue Nile-influenced contemporary band that i started: vesuvio solo

hayy i'm falling in love and this record is perfect for it, sue me. i think "over the hillside" is my fav now. religious. this record reminds me of the terence davies film distant voices still lives in its liturgical qualities and the production sounds like what the film looks like too i think.

Seven AM cos the last 2 minutes are the best sounding recording of anything ever. so much going on

majorly otm

hayy i'm falling in love and this record is perfect for it

i got to do this once and i'm guessing few future experiences will measure up to it

Terence Davies parallel otm

xp honestly though i am really into this album atm i don't feel like it's going to be among my all-time favs or anything. i.e. i think that moodymann dj-kicks is actually a better treatment of "life and love" as a subject just because it's so much more varied. but as an intense and focused worshipful pop kind of thing this record is super good.

I've had this for years and always had a weird kind of magnetic repulsion relationship with it - as if it were a symbol of age and sophistication to which I wasn't ready to submit. It's clearly right in a particular arc of mine, too: widescreen, impossibly romantic, committed, staring out of windows, that sort of secular longing for a bright beyond... Anyway, thanks to this thread and the five albums thread I've dug it out again and, though I do have some issues with the production, well, I guess I'm finally old and (un)sophisticated because it's just about all I need right now.

have been devoted to blue nile since high school but the process you just described resembles what as happened to me with Peter Gabriel's Us. It was the corniest dadrock to me when it came out and now as a frightened weak early-middle-ager I find it incredibly moving

This album is like a grand expression of tenderness without having the release of touching

^^^

I seem to run through the chords to "Let's Go Out Tonight" every time I pick up my guitar these days.

can i just btw

I love the meticulous productions of Talk Talk and David Sylvian's solo work, but I've never got on with The Blue Nile. I can't deny that the production on this record is great, but whenever I've listened to it I've often found my attention wavering very quickly. 'Let's Go Out Tonight' is a great example of a song that I switch off from long before the end.

― pen pineapple apple pen (Turrican), Monday, October 3, 2016 2:32 PM (two days ago)

Sing To God is on four, btw, and unlike Hats, stuff actually happens in it, so if you're a fan of stuff happening, check it out

― imago, Wednesday, October 5, 2016 2:13 PM (one hour ago)

yes everyone is lining up correctly

― supreme problematics (D-40), Saturday, July 11, 2015 2:26 AM (one year ago)

let's go out tonight

I would like to hear a good vinyl rip of this album

hayy i'm falling in love and this record is perfect for it, sue me. i think "over the hillside" is my fav now. religious. this record reminds me of the terence davies film distant voices still lives in its liturgical qualities and the production sounds like what the film looks like too i think.

:)

without going into too much detail i am also falling in love, and concomitantly (slowly) falling out of love with another person, a situation about which i have strong but mixed feelings, and maybe it's just bias but this record seems to pretty perfectly reflect those feelings. "let's go out tonight", for example, has this palpable supplication that can be read from either perspective. it's the only song i've listened to in the past 24 hours

i pray for love / coming out alright

I didn't really rate Saturday Night very highly until I heard some of the live versions on Youtube. Maybe that's one of the songs on the album that suffers most from the 80s production sound on the album, which I generally find fitting or neutral on the other songs on the album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I read the Nileism book in the time since this poll got started. Thought it was quite good. There are a few moments in there that really hurt my heart.

listening to this now for the first time. it seems like something that would reward multiple listenings - it's not grabbing me at first, really

First album is more immediately striking, this one is more demure

I seem to have more of these micro-epiphanies at the moment, where I listen to an album intensely for a few days, or a week, then don't listen again for maybe a month, six months. I can't decide if it's my age, my own listening habits (I'm streaming a lot at the moment) or evidence of some wider trend.

That is my not very original, or very interesting, thought for the day.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good results!

my current rankings SN = LGOT > DTL > HOTP > OTH > 7am > FADT

This album is like a grand expression of tenderness without having the release of touching

― Rae Kwoniff (NickB), Tuesday, October 4, 201

This is a terse, beautiful description of late '80s Bryan Ferry albums.

it may shock Brad that I still haven't finished a second listen.

Alfred between this and Lovesexy you are seriously letting down 1989

new song — Paul Buchanan - Mid Air (The Blue Nile)