Scotland's The Blue Nile has released some three albums over
the last 21 years, and I, for one, am a huge admirer of at least
the first two - A Walk Across The Rooftops and Hats.
I've harboured an ambition to write a book about them for the last
three years now and have made tentative steps towards getting
the band - or at the very least Paul Buchanan, the singer and
main songwriter - involved. They don't really operate along the
same timelines as other groups and, thus, I am playing a
waiting game.
The band has a new manager (Ed Bicknell, ex-Dire Straits
manager) and, by all accounts, an album ready to go. I think (and
hope) it's a good time to ask if anybody else reading this group
on a regular or irregular basis has any thoughts on the band and
its music.
I'd really appreciate any responses at all, whether they are
derisory, adulatory or plain ignorant, because a band with as
little momentum as The Blue Nile doesn't exactly whip up a
storm of debate in the press by their doing nothing that is
publicly acknowledgeable.
I suppose I'm asking the question: Does anybody care about
The Blue Nile anymore? If so, why? If not, why not?
Over to you...
― Sean Guthrie, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
i guess this has been done
here and it seems that a lot of
people do like them. i've never heard their third album but i'm not
missing much right?
― hamish, Thursday, 14 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
With hindsight, I suppose the thing I most admired about the first
two albums was the pleasing lack of filler - seven tracks following a
similar structure (slow opener, single, slower closer etc).
Peace At Last would have been a much better album if they had ditched
the three weakest tracks (Holy Love, War is Love, Soon). The crap
titles should have been enough to warn them!
I've spent enough time seeking out obscure MP3s of TBN over the past
six months, so I must still care about the long-awaited fourth album.
― Zanny Gognet, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)
Peace At Last has some lovely moments. I feel that my relationship
with the Blue Nile has suffered from the current proliferation of
tortured male-voiced angst bands. I find myself increasingly seeking
happier glammier things, whereas when Hats was released it was pretty
much totally where I was at.
― Daniel, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)