Hats

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In some ways, you can almost hear Hats as taking place in one 24-hour period, a final struggle to salvage a depleted relationship under the beacons of skyscrapers giving way to a dark night of the soul. “Over The Hillside” is the approach, a prelude that strives to locate rejuvenation on the horizon, that old iconography of that something else at the other end of the journey. “The Downtown Lights” is the welcoming fanfare, the poppier single that makes you feel embraced by the city, full of anticipation as much as broken fragments. 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.

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... The members of the Blue Nile met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. After graduating and easing into an uninspiring teaching gig, Buchanan says he and his friends turned to music in search of a career that they “could be instinctive about.” With Buchanan on guitar and vocals, Paul Joseph “PJ” Moore on keyboards and synth, and Robert Bell on bass, they recruited a drum machine as their fourth member. Headlights on the Parade" (live in Tennessee with Larry Saltzman, Steve Gaboury and Nigel Thomas) – 6:20 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.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.

Heim, Chris (15 March 1990). "Blue Nile: Hats (A & M)". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 24 October 2015. Hats peaked at number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. [8] Three singles were released from the album: the first, " The Downtown Lights", was released in September 1989 and peaked at number 67 on the UK Singles Chart, followed by " Headlights on the Parade" in September 1990 which reached number 72, and " Saturday Night" in January 1991, which reached number 50. [8] 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.Despite the movement of the music, Hats is an album in stasis. The Blue Nile understand that, like all good theater, relationships are inextricably linked to their setting, and the characters on Hats are prisoners to it, escaping only in fantasy. “Walk me into town/The ferry will be there to carry us away into the air,” Buchanan sings in “Over the Hillside.” “Let’s walk in the cool evening light/Wrong or right/Be at my side,” he pleads in “The Downtown Lights.” “I pray for love coming out all right,” he sings in the climactic final verse of “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” Then he cries out the title as one final desperate attempt to save something that’s already gone. Hats featured strongly on the end of year critics' lists, making number eight on Melody Maker 's albums of the year list, [21] and number 18 on NME 's list. [22] "The Downtown Lights" was also placed at number 15 on Melody Maker 's singles of the year list. [23] 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. 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.

Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band. Hats (CD liner notes). The Blue Nile. Linn Records. 1989. LKHCD2. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) 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. 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)Larkin, Colin (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rded.). London: Virgin Books. p.137. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6.