the blue nile: hats

btw this is impossible

fuck polling a hat

most inexplicable discovery from the 5 favorite albums thread, never heard of this, had no idea so many people held it so dear.

Going for a sleeper, "Let's Go Out Tonight". By the way, if you've never seen the hour long film made of their one(?) US tour, it's on You Tube, called "Flags and Fences", it's great

what i never heard of flags and fences!

I have been saving the book about them (Nileism) for the right moment.

i've listened to this about 6 times since discovering it a couple of days ago (from the 5 favorites thread) and i think i do have an early favorite but right now all i think i can say for sure is that it's not "seven am". and "seven am" is not bad by any means!

what i love about this album, and this band (i listened to AWATR once too) is how well it romanticizes the feeling of being in love in (and/or with?) a big city -- so many of their songs evoke walking deliriously down a city street late at night, taking in all the sights and sounds, heart swelled with love, or lust, or...something

there are a lot of classic ilx tim f posts about the particular romanticism of the blue nile that you also nail there k3vin

Isn't 'let's go out tonight' the most pop song in here?

this is like asking to pick your favorite child

most inexplicable discovery from the 5 favorite albums thread, never heard of this, had no idea so many people held it so dear.

― flappy bird, Monday, October 3, 2016 12:31 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It feels like a minor hit, maybe an ost appearance? There's a craig armstrong version which I knew before the blue nile one:

https://youtu.be/osP05cpJKNM

the last minute of "downtown lights" :O

nah, downtown lights is the obvious pop song here - been covered by rod stewart, annie lennox, even keane have done a version xp

We had it at record club a few years ago.

https://devonrecordclub.com/2013/02/04/the-blue-nile-hats-round-45-toms-selection/

Rob's reaction was interesting...he doesn't like late period Talk Talk either and, whilst they are not all that similar sonically, there's something about the purity of the sound that I guess is anathema to his ears.

I went for Saturday Night but could have picked any of the seven (seven track albums are always fantastic!).

Isn't 'let's go out tonight' the most pop song in here?

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, October 3, 2016 12:48 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, maybe. I always thought Headlights on the Parade was the poppiest

what i never heard of flags and fences!

I have been saving the book about them (Nileism) for the right moment.

― I wish you could see my home. It's... it's so... exciting (Jon not Jon), Monday, October 3, 2016

It's OK, rather prosaic considering how much a good writer could rhapsodize about them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arOG2_QG4ls

found an OG pristine vinyl copy of this for $1 a few months ago, pretty ridic what slips through the cracks sometimes.

still find it cheap at carboot sales here too, rubbing shoulders with chris rea et al

yeah same here, have been jamming it for the past few days. whatever past discussion there's been of it on ILM has somehow slipped by me for the decade i've been here
― ciderpress, Monday, October 3

Me three.

xpost to scik mouthy

it's hard to make a nuts and bolts case for an affinity between late talk talk and blue nile but i will say that the paul buchanan solo album is the only record that reminds me of the mark hollis solo album at all.

^^ more than enough to get me interested. Only heard abt Blue Nile's album through ilx last week, and Hollis was on my mind frequently.

album is called Mid Air

Listened to the title track of that and it reminded me of Lewis - L'amour

"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."

saturday night/quarter to five/when the storefronts are closed in paradise/meet me outside the cherry light

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.

Listened to the title track of that and it reminded me of Lewis - L'amour

― Evan, Monday, October 3, 2016 7:52 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ok wow...

George Costanza: "If this is a lie, if this is a joke, if this is your idea of some cute little game, we're finished ...

:(

At the office through laptop speakers so maybe that is a dumb comparison.

For example I thought those were synth pads behind his voice and piano. Realizing they're not.

Saturday night obv

yup

yeah "saturday night" is the one that i've been most obsessed with, when the strings come in a little over halfway through the song it's just game over, music doesn't get much better than that

"From A Late Night Train" is imo as sublime as it gets

reminds me of Aztec Camera!

not exactly my bag in general, but will say the singer reminds me a bit of Adrian Belew

Noooooooooo

I would have thought that Let's Go Out Tonight might be a front-runner, but from the comments, maybe not. Anyway, it gets my vote, but all are great.

A lot of people seem to prefer the Craig Armstrong cover (on which Buchanan sings), but I think Hats remains the definitive version. Second place goes to Isaac Hayes version…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3vuy0QJ0BA

Evan, all I meant was I want you to be right. I want it to sound like Lewis. And it does. Nothing dumb about it.

Oh, totally misread you then! I'm often a little too worried about offending those who are closer to an artist than I am. New to the Blue Nile myself but liked that solo track much more.

dude holy shit that isaac hayes cover of "let's go out tonight" !!

Oh, totally misread you then! I'm often a little too worried about offending those who are closer to an artist than I am. New to the Blue Nile myself but liked that solo track much more.

― Evan, Monday, October 3, 2016 9:58 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can't say I was too clear with Seinfeld reference tbh. Just really, really wished your Lewis reference was on point. And it was.

yeah "saturday night" is the one that i've been most obsessed with, when the strings come in a little over halfway through the song it's just game over, music doesn't get much better than that

― k3vin k., Monday, October 3, 2016 7:00 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I was coming here to say that "saturday night" has the slightest of edges because the string refrain from the 3 and half minute mark is like two lovers walking towards each other on a city bridge.

also it's my "song i would sing on Idol or equiv" song.

"saturday night" is my vote

http://www.primlifestyles.com/wp-content/plugins/RSSPoster_PRO/cache/c9820_Beyonce-Formation-4.gif

most inexplicable discovery from the 5 favorite albums thread, never heard of this, had no idea so many people held it so dear.
― flappy bird, Monday, October 3, 2016 12:31 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya me neither

shouts out to my favorite lyric ever though: "in love we're all the same / we're walking down an empty street"

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

Do Blue Nile fans enjoy David Cassidy's "Romance"?

alfred get it together

Sorry -- too busy listening to It's Better to Travel.

We listened to the first two tracks of this last night after I told him "I think I'm falling in love with you" and he said the same thing. He loves "Saturday Night". Also I found a copy of the first record on this trip.

<3

awwww....love that!

aw

that is so extremely sweet map

beautiful!

😊

<333

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

it is the sound of longing buds

"From A Late Night Train" is imo as sublime as it gets

― Master of Treacle, Monday, October 3, 2016 3:03 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am beginning to realize this

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.

― Tim F, Monday, October 3, 2016 6:27 PM (nine months ago)

this is a characteristically amazing post but i have to say that after reading (part of) that paul buchanan interview with the quietus after mid air came out made me realize that all of their songs are very much painfully autobiographical

"From a Late Night Train" is one of the best songs on the album but it's not the kind of song that I could picture anyone saying is "the best one," hence it's ranking here. it's beautiful but too subtle to completely steal the show

it is the sound of longing buds

― harold melvin and the bluetones (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, November 1, 2016 12:44 PM (eight months ago

btw this is otm -- every blue nile/paul buchanan song is about longing

I need to own my own copy.

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

― I wish you could see my home. It's... it's so... exciting (Jon not Jon), Monday, October 3, 2016 6:41 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Monday, October 3, 2016 7:01 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow these posts speak to my soul

nice piece

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-blue-nile-hats/?mbid=social_twitter

Has this been reissued again?

fucking perfect essay man

there's a gord downie lyric, "bigger dreams, bigger screens, bigger feelings are planned," that i think about a lot whenever i play this album

(been discussed on the pitchfork is dumb thread as well fyi)

poll results sound about right, front loaded album, if there's a bad song on it it's probably Seven AM.

Let's Go Out Tonight is of course the song to cry to, so vulnerable, their best imo

7 AM is a great song!!

whats crazy is the sound of that song could be like ... a 2017 rap song

Ha! Future could prob rap his way through a lot of Blue Nile songs. I can see that.

"seven am" is awesome, "each time i fall for you / it hurts me a little bit more / than i want it to" is a central moment on the record

Yeah. The repeated "than I want it to" echoing off in the mist seems quintessential to the record.

haha, maybe I'll get around to it someday - don't particularly like the bass sound

“seven AM” is probably the only song from their first two records that I don’t truly love. but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or that I won’t love it some day

“from a late night train” has with some time emerged for me as the real tearjerker and centerpiece of the album

I'm going through a relationship break-up right now and this album is just on constant repeat*. just perfect.

*i also listen to this album a decent amount when I'm not going through a break-up to be fair.

let's go out tonight and from a late night train are my 2 faves on the record, 7am my least favourite but it's still p great. i really like the baseline but I'm not so keen on some of the keys

Shit got real... I'm sorry to hear that Jim, and I truly hope you'll be ok.

Having said that, yeah, it's probably the best break-up music out there. But especially when you're not experiencing one.

yeah I was in the middle of a breakup when I got into this band, it’s really the perfect music for that. for better or worse...

7 am is top 2 song from the album to me & the one that best transcends its setting

bass sound makes it!!

other being “saturday night”?

Blue Nile could've done me a world of... something, if it had been around when I had my break-ups. Only discovered them 5, 6 idk years ago (in true 'where have you been all my life' fashion)

Shit got real... I'm sorry to hear that Jim, and I truly hope you'll be ok.

Having said that, yeah, it's probably the best break-up music out there. But especially when you're not experiencing one.

― ♫ very clever with maracas.jpg ♫ (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, January 10, 2018 1:37 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for the kind words, I'm doing well, it's been a slow-motion breakup so I've been through the whole 7 stages of grief thing and it's ending amicably.

back to the topic actually saturday night actually might be in my top 2, not sure which song it would usurp though

sending good vibes your way, jim

“saturday night”, “lets go out tonight”, and “from a late night train” are in my top 10 paul buchanan songs

hats is the record to listen to during and following a breakup. mid air is revisiting those feelings years later

Good to hear it is somewhat amicable, god speed Jim <3

“saturday night”, “lets go out tonight”, and “from a late night train” are in my top 10 paul buchanan songs

― k3vin k., Wednesday, January 10, 2018 9:57 PM (sixteen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha yeah, same here! Don't think we've ever done a Blue Nile POX (would be extremely hard)

High from 96 is pretty great, they did a pretty remarkable job of sticking to their lane and not getting bogged down in 90s stuff

my paul buchanan POX is pretty heavily weighted toward the first 2 albums and mid air, and I’m not including non-album tracks, even though things like “I love this life” and “regrets” and “christmas” and “st catherine’s day” etc etc etc are right up there

from rags to riches
easter parade
heat wave
let’s go out tonight
from a late night train
saturday night
family life
mid air
half the world
cars in the garden

It's an infallible selection. Kudos for including Half the World.

Mid Air is a masterpiece. I'll have a good long think about my POX.

Because of Toledo is great

yeah high is a good record. I know it’s only a matter of time until I totally fall for it. “toledo”, broken love, she saw the world, stay close, all really good

"Seven AM" is my least favorite song on the album. :(

Every person dissing 7am is objectively wrong

Trotsky wrote something similar in Literature and Revolution.

Seven AM is my least favourite on the album but it's still great

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

― Spottie, Monday, October 3, 2016 11:23 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

7am is great and i’m pretty sure there’s an Andy K post somewhere that establishes this conclusively.

one of the songs has to be the 7th best!!

no its the best actually

its kind of wild to me that ppl think its relatively bad, it always struck me as a standout, compositionally the most unique record on the album

does make sense that the track to stand out the most would be most divisive

7AM is straight robert palmer, apart from the funky guitar break which is automatic by the pointer sisters iirc. these are not criticisms though

there's an album called hats?!?!

fuck all of you who like it

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:13 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love this album to bits obv but this sometimes pops up in my head and never fails to make me chuckle.

wow this is......really good. i hadn't heard of it at all until this week.

xp otm, classic post

hats!

http://www.glasgowist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/BlueNileTrio.jpg

woo CAD!

gave this album a listen last night for the first time ever

let's go out tonight is my favourite on it

rest of the album sounds like a grower

7am does sound different but that warbly bass is fun as a pre-dnb/electronica/trap thing

hats!

http://www.glasgowist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/BlueNileTrio.jpg

― piscesx, Thursday, January 11, 2018 9:10 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

excluding the hat paul's outfit there is definitely something i would wear

i also just listened to this for the first time this week! i like the whole thing but man "the downtown lights" is a killer song. i'm assuming the real fans look down on it because it's clearly the "pop hit" of the album but it is so good.

NB. real fans do not look down on the downtown lights

they look up

the way Downtown Lights builds and builds and I'm tired of crying on the staiiiiiirs

again:

in love we're all the same
we're walking down an empty street

^^^^^^^^ otm

uh brad...did u know the universe was creating content esp for u???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_172cffdDJU

lol yeah that's one of my favorite videos on youtube

same

Gorgeous.

I too checked out this album for the first time this week. Bit embarrassing it took so long given how many times I've seen them namechecked in threads of other bands I love (like the 1975). Great stuff

Full album covered by Pure Bathing Culture for Turntable Kitchen, with Ben Gibbard guesting on two tracks. Subscription-based, but available to non-club members, the black vinyl is $25 + $5 s&h, for U.S. folk, and includes digital.

Nice Stereogum write-up of Hats, also.

For the 'things that sound a bit like Blue Nile': I think Epic Soundtracks has aesthetic similarities anyway, but his Good Things album seems particularly apposite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joz9SigJ6eg

sometimes wonder why the Hats thread isn't just always on the front page.

mods, make it so

official album of ilm

Hats belong on top naturally

Re-reading this thread always makes me feel happy

This was posted on the C or D thread in case anyone missed it (re-released this year and available on streaming services)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOJ9QcVXZzE

i listened to hats tonight knowing it might be my last late night jog of summer and i can't imagine listening to it at, like, 6pm in the coming months. it's been the first album i've confidently called my favorite album ever made since probably high school, and i only discovered it in 2018, and it's an album i've actually listened to less this year as i've been consciously trying to revisit old favorites while doing my new favorite activity of "moving my body", but damn if isn't the greatest thing ever made every time i go back to it

one of us!

I find it hard to imagine jogging to any song apart from "Downtown Lights" but more power to you!

official album of ilm

Thought that was Jordan:The Comeback.

great album for a walk in the rain

a walk across the raindrops

this such a great comedown album

i wish there was a 12 min long mix of “saturday night”

the final two minutes of "headlights on the parade" rivals anything on this album for me

i found a mint condition copy of this on cassette at a record store in london last week, made me very happy

one of us! one of us!

this has become one of those albums I don't actually have to listen to to get killed by it, I just have to think about it

otm

I tend to want more "From a Late Night Train" and "Family Life" from this band rather than the usual lite funk, though I guess one of the things that makes those tracks special is that they are uniquely spare.

may I direct you to his solo album

Caution: challops ahead.

"I Want to Know What Love Is" by Foreigner would make a pretty good Blue Nile song.

No.

even if you stripped it down enough i don't think it'd be restrained enough

I can hear it but lyrically no.

Do we have a thread for songs that could be off Hats?

'The Lady in Red' :0

i wish there was a 12 min long mix of “saturday night”

― J0rdan S., Sunday, January 1, 2023 4:03 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Whenever I listen to Hats it's the album plus "Saturday Night" two more times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3vuy0QJ0BA

oh man

^^ had a surreal moment when that came on the radio in a cafe near Sagrada Familia while the sun was setting circa 1999.
looking at Gaudi's architecture bathed in a golden glow while this unfamiliar slooooow version of a familiar song played, it felt like my brain was melting.
(being slightly tipsy didn't help.)

Is that a marimba? For someone who nails the late night lethargy of the song, adding that is like throwing in slide whistle or a saw. It's a 10, but ...

an aside: atmospheric slide whistle new fav micro-genre

"it's the poor man's pedal steel"

sorry. as you were.

but yeah, didn't know about this cover. pretty reminiscent of his classic sidelong makeovers of burt bacharach.

ofc i had to look it up and it originates as a b side from a uk only single. nice.

2024 - could this be the year the long-rumored complete second Paul Buchanan album releases?

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

i thought i'd burned this album out but i can't seem to stop playing it lately. apologies if someone else has mentioned this about this album but it's a great working class album isn't it? of course i was always in absolute devotion to buchanan's vocal performance but i'm finding new appreciation for it - every syllable he utters is just unreal, so pure.

otm

apologies if someone else has mentioned this about this album but it's a great working class album isn't it?

i've always pictured the narrator as walking down the street late at night alone, it's a specific kind of working class urbanity. "over the hillside" kinda sets the stage ("walk me into town, the ferry will be there")

the album is obsessed w/ nightlife and the romantic possibilities of going out at night, but it's also so inwardly drawn and focused on the emotional aspect of socializing that there is barely any actual socializing happening in the songs. pretty much the only parts of the outside world he describes are the lights... i'm not sure the narrator at any point in the album is actually even inside. he could be moving thru life w/o a penny to his name. if you think about the great music about nightlife, how much of it involves being at the party or in the club? even putting aside anything from after the millennium, on songs like "west end girls" or janet "go deep" the narrator is singing about specific things like knocking tables over or the quality of the DJ. the physical distance of the narrator is part of what makes 'hats' hit so hard on an emotional level -- it exists almost strictly in the zone of time after the parties are over and the bars are closed and you're left only w/ your internal monologue, but w/ that certain sorta post-night out magic dancing around in your head. and i think that distance from the goings on also helps it code in the way that you're saying, map. a song like "let's go out tonight" renders the bar or club almost in religious terms -- he sings about being drawn to the light in the way people think about heaven. the concept of commerce w/in these spaces is absent from these songs

it's also an even more specific kind of british working class urbanity. obv my experience is not in the late 80s but even now there is still such a stronger culture of walking around and utilizing public transportation after a night out in the UK than there is in america. the people i hang out w/ in london are of similar class and professional status (which is to say, largely writers and journalists) as the people i hang out w/ in new york, but i never hear anyone in london at the end of the night be like "hey i'm leaving, my uber is outside," which is a regular occurrence in new york. my perception as a visitor anyway is that even now among ppl w/ enough disposable income to pay £15 to take a cab home, you still just walk to the bus or the tube and kinda let yourself be awash in the afterglow of a night out, which to me is very much the perspective from where this album comes

Afterglow is not a word I would I associate with a late night bus from George Square in Glasgow tbh.

one thing i've always puzzled over is the emotion that seems to be attached to all of the images of city lights, empty streets and cars going by. they always seem to be references to some kind of anchor point or manifestation of love and beauty in the context of a relationship - all of "let's go out tonight" seems to be that way. so i think a crucial part of this album is the subject of a grand love, and maybe romance itself. it's a very romantic album at its core, i think. so the other day it struck me that the city landscape that it occupies, which you describe so beautifully and thoroughly jordan, that maybe all of those images are stand-ins for transcendental love. i think of the rush of words at the end of "the downtown lights," it almost sounds like he's being crucified on them. there's the lyric "in love we're all the same / we're walking down an empty street." also i think references to friday and saturday are symbolic of romance and love in a similar way (and also part of the working class thing - fridays and saturdays being these weekly moments of possibility for working people). but these images aren't what usually get brought out as symbols for love - they're all ghostly, unoccupied, and transitory. there's a contradiction and a melancholy there. the generalness of romance and love rising above and away from the particularities of a person. i do find a certain truth to that. and ultimately it just feels saturated with hope for love and for romance in spite of the transitory and ghostly aspects of it, it's an album-length prayer for it.

ultimately it just feels saturated with hope for love and for romance in spite of the transitory and ghostly aspects of it, it's an album-length prayer for it.

i also think it implies that there is some value in that transitory period, that there is something itself romantic about melancholic longing. as a gay person this perspective feels very natural and comfortable to me... one coping mechanism for being in the closet is finding something meaningful and even special in your relationship to love and romance in that transitory period. of being the ghost. the album never resolves, and instead chooses to luxuriate in that in between

I think if one steps back from this album specifically, it's easier to see how Buchanan was invested in telling the same type of story (both in content and in form) over and over again.

"A Walk Across The Rooftops" (the song, which is the opening song on their first album) opens with:

I walk across the rooftops
I follow a broken Thread
Of white rags falling slowly down
Flags caught on the fences
I am in love, I am in love with you
I am in love, I am in love with you

This is a lyrical set piece we see over and over again, this intensely visual first-person description of moving through empty urban spaces like an archeologist, taking in everything but judging nothing, every detail pregnant with possibility but detached from any fixed signification - and then the shift to the simplest, most direct statement of romantic attachment possible. And the narrator and the listener both realise that this is the point, the vantage from which the world around has become both enlivened and estranged, lit up in the most intoxicating manner possible.

And so Buchanan encapsulates a certain aspect of love, which is the way it colours and transforms everything around it like sunlight (or city lights); and as with the sun, the actual detail of love is something that Buchanan can only gaze at directly for a moment before looking away, describing the source of this feeling in only the simplest terms before once again returning his gaze to a study of its effects.

Then, "Tinseltown in the Rain":

Why did we ever come so far?
I knew I'd seen it all before
Tall buildings reach up in vain
Tinseltown is in the rain
I know now love was so exciting
Tinseltown in the rain
All men and women
Here we are
Caught up in this big rhythm
One day this love will all blow over
Time for leaving the parade
Is there a place in this city
A place to always feel this way?

Archeology: the singer observes the seeming permanence of the city, the "tall buildings (which) reach up in vain" for the heavens, knowing that even these monuments are themselves fleeting if one zooms out far enough, but in the moment their permanence feels assured. And he wonders if this big emotion that is bursting out of him can last - is there a place in this city to always feel this way? Hoping that it can, fearing that it can't.

Do I love you? Yes, I love you
Will we always be happy go lucky?
Do I love you? Yes, I love you
But it's easy come, and it's easy go
All this talking is only bravado, yeah

Is this feeling real, can it last? And if it doesn't, would that make the way I feel now any less real?

just wanna say this has been a very enjoyable revive so far, some really great posts here

Yeah. Feeling this revive pretty hard

yeah love this discussion

“saturday night” is going to to be the closing song at my wedding

Killer choice.

This was the perfect soundtrack for my walk around rainy Vienna this afternoon.

Pray for me, praying for the light
Baby, baby, let's go out tonight

The wishful thinking/hoping/praying/begging of this album transports me through all different periods of my adult life.

i was worried about listening to this again after i broke up with someone a month ago. i have a burned cd of it in my car and every time i flip past it i wince. i'm just sitting around alone with my cat this afternoon and decided to put it on and ... it's definitely not ruined lol. 'over the hillside' moved me to tears as it does, not for the loss of someone or some thing, but for the insane ecstatic existence of love itself. so i'm just sitting here listening to this thing filled with gratitude.

You need to listen to Bête Noire stat.

what

The Ferry album with the closest mood to Hats.

ah gotcha

i think now is the time for more ferry in my life.

i was worried about listening to this again after i broke up with someone a month ago. i have a burned cd of it in my car and every time i flip past it i wince. i'm just sitting around alone with my cat this afternoon and decided to put it on and ... it's definitely not ruined lol. 'over the hillside' moved me to tears as it does, not for the loss of someone or some thing, but for the insane ecstatic existence of love itself. so i'm just sitting here listening to this thing filled with gratitude.

― five six seven, eight nine ten, begin (map), Saturday, May 17, 2025 2:50 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hope you’re doing ok map. and I am biased, because it’s when I first discovered this album, but right after a breakup seems like the perfect time to listen to this record

hey thanks k3vin. i'm doing well :). that's cool to hear that you discovered this after a breakup.

Only love will survive.

(Straight line from Donne's The Relic to Larkin's An Arundel Tomb to Headlights on the Parade.)

thankfully i have a lot of love in my life.

xp oh that's cool! i've got to check those out.

<3 map

:)

it's only love that gets you through

map, just wanted to cosign and say hey. always enjoy your insightful postings.

hats was pleasant from a distance until the summer after i got divorced and was living alone for the first time ever. i checked out the band because of their glowing reputation among critics (mainly amg+trouser press), but all that praise finally started making more sense after that. haven't really looked back since, of course.

i can't see the future, but it seems unlikely that this album will ever sound anything except comforting to me.

I love this album but the debut is still my go-to Blue Nile as it hit me at just the right moment in high school and "Hats" came out right after I graduated college.

I want to thank ILX because I had never heard of the Blue Nile until this thread blew up with the vinyl reissues and I bought them all unheard. They’re a beautiful band and running into a Blue Nile fan in the wild feels extremely special.

I want to thank ILX because I had never heard of the Blue Nile until this thread blew up with the vinyl reissues and I bought them all unheard. They’re a beautiful band and running into a Blue Nile fan in the wild feels extremely special.

i love ‘hats’ deeply but find it difficult to listen to sometimes, just the emotional overwhelm of it all. it’s not really something i can just casually listen to or have on in the background.

bete noire is great - thanks alfred.