the blue nile - hats

No reason, but I decided to listen to the second album by the Blue Nile today. Hats. Still as brilliant as always. This is a perfect album.

 

There's simply nothing wrong with this record at all. Everything in its right place, not a beat or a note that isn't required.

 

Hats was released in the autumn of 1989, but the Blue Nile had actually begun work on the record back in 1985, as their record label was keen for a quick follow up to the well received debut album A Walk Across The Rooftops.

 

But the Blue Nile couldn't record anything to their satisfaction. Nothing they did seemed to be good enough. After a couple of years of sporadic recording they basically scrapped everything entirely and went home. But this seemed to spark the band into life. Away from the sterile atmosphere of the studio Paul Buchanan found he could write again. Working out of each other's homes using a portastudio, the Blue Nile finally began to get somewhere and recorded demos for the whole album very quickly. When the band returned to the studio in late 1988, the album took shape immediately and the sessions were completed in just a few weeks.

 

Everything on Hats is honed, perfected, detailed. The tempos are almost universally slow, the instrumentation sparse, clear and uncluttered, every track takes its time, unhurried, unflustered. But these are songs in which you can wallow, songs which are strangely emotional and soulful despite being made primarily with drum machines and synths, songs which tug at the heartstrings. Buchanan's voice is, as always, a thing of beauty. The lyrics are impressionistic, but somehow say so much. The feelings evoked are universal - mainly loss and love - but the way the songs are constructed and the way Buchanan sings, it sounds like the songs are meant for you, just you. No-one else.

 

Gorgeous melodies, a marvellously wistful air, the whole album conjures up pictures of an autumnal evening, a bit of drizzly rain perhaps, but nothing too heavy, car lights reflected in puddles, lonely people in a darkening city walking under pale street lights.

 

It's almost pointless to single out tracks from what is a very complete album, but I will anyway. Because in "Let's Go Out Tonight" we have what I believe to be one of the best songs ever recorded. It's both heartbreaking and uplifting, joyful and mournful. Goodness knows how the Blue Nile managed to create such a glorious song. But then I could say that about any of the songs on Hats.

 

What an album.