Remember this classic album: The Blue Nile's Hats

Formed in Glasgow in the early ‘80s, Paul Buchanan, Robert Bell and Paul Joseph Moore’s The Blue Nile released their debut A Walk Across The Rooftops in 1984. Issued on the specialist Linn label, the record was the polar opposite of the glitzy, style-over-substance electronica that dominated the music scene at the zenith of the Thatcher/Freedman monetarist era. Evidencing a romantic and considered melancholy that married haunting and crystalline keyboard loops, warm rolling basslines and Buchanan’s plaintive and expressive vocal, the record spawned two minor hit singles and heralded the Glasgow three-piece as an original and resonant talent.

Strange it was, then, that it was five years before the band released a follow-up, 1989’s Hats. Fans of previous singles ‘Tinseltown In The Rain’ and ‘Stay’ may have been dismayed at the absence of an immediate single, yet connoisseurs quickly realised that this second album was every bit the equal of its predecessor. Again the sparse and affecting keyboards are present; again the tales are of lost love and its accompanying resignation, told against a backdrop of rainy streets lit by the headlights of passing cars, a cold tableau transformed to gold by the Midas touch of Buchanan’s vocal.

Comprising only seven tracks, Hats is a modern classic in every sense of that term. Best heard as a complete work the song titles tell the expectant listener as much as they need to know about the treats to come. The Downtown Lights, From A Late Night Train and Seven A.M. are possible standout tracks on an outstanding album that forever makes a lie of the erroneous view that electronic music cannot match more organically created sounds in illustrating all that is beautiful and terrible about romantic love.

In light of Hats' remarkable achievement, then - and in response to frequent hotpress.com messageboard laments to the effect of "Why have so few people heard of The Blue Nile?" - we bring you this classic album revisited.

Click here to read a review in full, taken from the Hot Press series "21 For The 21st: Albums Of The Millennium" - and stay tuned for more classic album reviews in future.