Hats

I normally shy away from synth based, eighties style stuff, but having read alot about how marvellous The Blue Nile are in a thousand critical reviews and fave lists, I felt obliged to try my hand.

I bought High the relatively new album which I adored, sumptuous arrangements and haunting vocals, melancholy ,grown up, soulful and not in any way derivative of other singer songwriters.

Hats was my second acquisition. Its a very fine album. Exquisite mood music. Very well constructed songs. While the tunes never quite burn into your consciousness, the mood lingers there and you return to experience that mood again and again to it. Get a glass of your favourite wine (Blue nile aren't a beer band) and listen to "Downtown Lights"...it's a masterpiece, full of soaring musical landscapes . Emerge healthier, Hats is very intelligent popular music, original and gorgeeous.

There must be a case for personally hunting down and sticking pins into strange dolls if smart detective work can discover what madman wrote the official Amazon description on Hats. This sublime album by an elusive bunch of Scottish Minstrels is one of the best British albums of any decade and rare gem. What it is not is "anthemic like U2" and neither does it "compare to Simply Red and Deacon Blue" While in terms of extending the milk of human kindess we can only hope that the author of this heinous claptrap was successful in his or her GSCE Music exam since the comparisons are laughable and "Hats" deserves a whole better than these shoddy musical "bedmates". All Blue Nile albums are essentially markers in time and the gaps between their production seems to grow ever longer. Yet the sparsity of their output over the years and a host of great albums cannot hide the fact that "Hats" is the masterpiece. Granted many will feel a warm glow when passing mention is made of "Tinseltown in the rain" and especially the summer atmospherics of Heat-wave. Equally when it comes to " Peace at last" amongst its vinyl grooves are to be found superb melodrama of "Family Life" and the exhilaration of "Body and Soul" but also if truth be told a couple of duffers. The same also true of High although "Stay close" should be the Scottish national anthem.

On "Hats" every song is perfect in every way. No real point in singling any out. What you should do is listen to them in key settings. Memories flood back of a cold evening when Downtown lights was playing on the headphones on top of the Empire State building in New York as your reviewer surveyed this remarkable expanse and the world suddenly made sense and five minutes of wonderful memory remain firmly locked down never to be displaced. "From a late night train" is that song when your on your own, the darkness has descended and you want to be alone, the beauty of it is a rare delicacy, with the vocal completely heart wrenching and the mood set by achingly lonesome piano and synths. The opener "Over the Hillside" creeps up on you and then explodes while "Lets go out tonight" more than any song captures the reality of our ordinary love affairs and heartbreak. There is only one person I know who dislikes this album and he drives a Subaru, supports Man U and thinks James Blunt is brill. What greater recommendation could I give you to get Hats?

Paul Buchanan has one of the most fragile and beautiful voices. I remember a live Radio 1 concert from the Blue Nile broadcast many years ago when in silence before a song someone shouted from the audience to him "don't be nervous". Buchanan laughed quietly and retorted that he had State Registered nurses waiting in the wings. Blue Nile are that type of band; you want them to succeed but not too much in case everyone likes them. And yes it is all a bit selfish and precarious and it is true that they deserve success as big as a continent but its not going to happen which is part of their tragedy and also their appeal. One day the truth will out and we will recognise what we missed but until then stop what your doing and immediately download it. Thats an order.

I've known the Blue Nile since they've launched their second album, Hats. Other reviewers do a better job than me in singing the glories of this music so I'll content myself in stating bluntly the pure simple matter of fact: Hats is an absolute masterpiece of music.

To me, it is the best of all (just 4!) the Blue Nile albums and it is in that terrible list of "the 5 records to take to a desert island". Can music ever be so melankolic and at the same time so joyously happy? Can it sound so despairing and ultimately brimming with hope and enchantment? Yes, the Blue Nile answer yes with this album.

I'd like to end up this review with a three-sentence personal story: I once lend Hats to the woman I loved. I already knew by then that there was no hope. Hats did not moved her.