Hats

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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. Larkin, Colin (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rded.). London: Virgin Books. p.137. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6. 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. Headlights on the Parade" (live in Tennessee with Larry Saltzman, Steve Gaboury and Nigel Thomas) – 6:20

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. Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band.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.

Heim, Chris (15 March 1990). "Blue Nile: Hats (A & M)". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 24 October 2015.

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a b Thigpen, David (17 May 1990). "The Blue Nile: Hats". Rolling Stone. No.578. New York. p.149. Archived from the original on 2 October 2007 . Retrieved 1 October 2015. Murray, Robin (20 November 2012). "Tinseltown In The Rain: The Blue Nile". ClashMusic.com . Retrieved 10 March 2013. 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.

Hats (CD liner notes). The Blue Nile. Linn Records. 1989. LKHCD2. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link) 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. 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.

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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 ] Blais-Billie, Braudie; Sodomsky, Sam (12 June 2018). "Pure Bathing Culture Cover the Blue Nile's Hats in Its Entirety". Pitchfork . Retrieved 13 November 2022.