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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Some eight barren years have elapsed since Glasgow's nocturnal melancholics The Blue Nile last tendered a studio album. However, patience is a virtue and "High" - which features material conceived and recorded over a ten year period, including a song once gifted to a former Spice Girl - yields a generous dividend for prostrate audiophiles and sleepwalking nighthawks alike. Like a far-away comet circling the universe in sublime and yet static perpetuity, The Blue Nile manoeuvre impressively into view every few years having changed very little, a compliment which can scarcely be applied to many other artists in their profession. In the manner of Talk Talk's Mark Hollis or Jackie Leven, Paul Buchanan's distressed utterances exude a downcast but romantic spirituality, mining a rich blue seam of fatigued detachment from the diaphragm upwards while somewhere in the background pianos, electronic drums and subtle acoustic guitars pulse inconspicuously and yet with all the assurances of a heart steadily beating inside the chest. Eavesdropping on restaurant conversations, gazing at passing cars, looking at "the morning people going to work and fading away" is the stuff of cold, terminal exclusion but "High" is beautifully warm, offering the uncluttered quiescent orderliness of sonic Feng Shui for the soul. --Kevin Maidment
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still as good as ever,
By
This review is from: High (Audio CD)
In the late 80's I picked up the Blue Nile album Walk Across the Rooftops and it became one of my 'must take with me to college' tapes.
For some reason I never looked to see what had happened to this band and just assumed they would have split up. That was until I heard the recent excellent duet by Texas 'Sleep' with Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan. A search on Amazon showed Blue Nile had released a couple of albums since the one I owned. The 2004 album High has just been re-released (probably following on from the exposure with Texas). I've now had High on in the car for a couple of weeks and it's just like being at college all over again. Paul's vocals as strong as ever and what a collection of tracks. Ever had one of those albums where you keep coming back to one track again and again? For me it's track 5, She Saw The World, what a belter. Why isn't this band better known? Perhaps they are all the better for their relative obscurity.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A polished gem.,
By
This review is from: High (Audio CD)
Blue Nile fans. Who are they?
I got into The Blue Nile because someone told me they thought I'd like them. They weren't wrong. And now everyone I know who likes good quality music likes them too, following a referral from me, because this band seems to exist on personal recommendations. Which is just as well, as they only manage one album every 7 years, on average! Whenever they do release an album, the critics fall over themselves to praise it. Maybe that's the kiss of death for them.... Well, these critics are quicker than me. I find that each album requires time and quite a few listens to actually love. Each time I've got my hands on an album, I am initially a bit disappointed. Until about 10 listens time, when I am raving to anyone who will listen to me that it is a work of unmitigated genius etc. etc. Their (relative) downfall is that their tracks don't tend to have the instant appeal that a lot of listeners appear to need. Still others refer to the smooth, glossy, meticulous productions as background music. Surely that's unfair, if you listen to Paul Buchanan's impassioned vocal. The religious overtones to some of the work can also put people off, but when music is this dizzily hypnotic, I just don't care one way or the other. Unashamedly soulful and romantic, The Blue Nile carve an individual furrow through pop. Every album has been released on a different label so far - faith and longevity is clearly an issue for the record labels. Their next album is due in about 2011 (on current stats), but I, for one, will queue up to get it. Come on, Mr Buchanan, write more, write faster. But he won't. Tortured genius, or pedantic megalomaniac? Who knows? And who cares? We may only have 4 albums, but by crikey they're all corkers! If all songwriters took this much trouble, the aural soundscape would be awash in beauty all the time. As close to perfect as Mr Buchanan can make it, this album's highlights include the title track and the awesome acoustic ballad "Because of Toledo". Oh, and the beautiful, bizarre and mildly disturbing opener, "The Days of Our Lives", featuring the same chord beating out for the duration of the track, with a snaky little bass riff set against a lyric that is either domestic stream-of-consciousness limbo, or the musings of an omni-present narrator berating modern life. Yikes! Compelling, though. Stylistically, "High" harks back to the 1989 release "Hats", in that it feels more programmed than the more guitar-y, organic "Peace at Last". But, if it's possible, the songs are more mature and thoughthful than ever. Exquisite. Measured. Moving.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
bruised but unbowed,
By
This review is from: High (Audio CD)
The Blue Nile return at last with another collection of sublime, intoxicating yet uplifting songs, characterised by Paul Buchanan's sharply observed bittersweet vignettes. I'm surprised that other review haven't picked out "Because of Toledo" for special mention. It's one of the most stark, haunting and melancholic songs this side of...well, anywhere, actually - and yet is truly what The Blue Nile are about. Paul Buchanan's voice, torn with hopeless resignation, is accompanied by a picked guitar line that builds through a typical "Blue Nile Chorus" striking in it's simplicity: an unusual but majestic key change, strengthened by a sudden harmony, a wordless almost breathless phrase then, a wash of strings, a solemn horn. No waste, no cinematic score for false drama, no theatrics. Paul Buchanan's voice isn't technically perfect. It glows with an epic weariness. If we had to give it a name, it would be Walter Matthau. Yet it's up there with the great voices from that land - Gary Clark, Billy Mckenzie, Hamish Stuart, Roddy Frame.... So, I hear you ask, who do they sound like? Well,that's just it - no one. And we don't want another band to sound like The Blue Nile. We've already got a band that sounds just like The Blue Nile. They're called........The Blue Nile. And that's all we need. I want you to go and buy this. I want you to share the experience I had all those years ago when "A Walk Across the Rooftops" leapt out of my stereo, slapped me about the face and told me things just wouldn't be the same again - at least for another 6 years, when "Hats" slipped into my blood and somehow scrambled my DNA. HANG ON, just a minute, let's think about this...........more sales, bigger record company, more pressure from the suits, duets with Ronan, covers by Sugarbabes, remixes by Flip and Fill, interviews (aaarrgghh!). No, on second thoughts, maybe it's better this way, and I'll just continue to grow old to a soundtrack punctuated, from time to time, by The Blue Nile.
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