| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| a guy in a rover |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 08:30:29
I have previously tried to start a thread on here about one of my favourite acts of all time - The Blue Nile - and got absolutely no replies. http://forum.frankblack.net/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15464
I've also tried to start up conversations with various people about them but nobody has ever heard of them or seems interested. I was prepared to let this drop until I saw Paul Buchanan (the lead singer of the Blue Nile) at the Bridgewater hall the other night. I was absolutely blown away, it was, possibly, the best gig I have ever been to. It was so atmospheric I thought I was going to die. So, as a result of this I have decided to do something completely bizarre,(considering my current financial predicament), in order to spread the good news about the Blue Nile. I am offering 3 people (on a first come first served basis) a proposition. Buy either their debut 'A Walk Across the Rooftops' or its follow up 'Hats'. Give the album a real good go, listen to it at least ten times, preferably late at night, in the dark. And...if you dont like it, I will refund your money
Dont believe me, fine, but I am seriously tabling this offer. Anyone interested?
A pig or a goat well, they wouldn’t let you be mistreated
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| 9 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| a guy in a rover |
Posted - 06/03/2006 : 08:26:31
Erebus, you are a good man. You will go a long way in life if you take advice from lunatics like me. Enjoy Hats, its a musical masterpiece!
A pig or a goat well, they wouldn’t let you be mistreated
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| Erebus |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 22:12:28
OK. Just ordered Hats, on the basis of allmusic.com giving it the slight edge, and because of the overall rover guy lunacy. Lunacy is good, at least in other people. No guarantee needed.
The bonus of the research was opening up a new browser window and seeing my Cardinals are tied with the Chicago Cubs in the 14th inning. Diversion ensued, but order placed.
Speaking of lunacy, and Chicago, isn't Andrew Bird a genius? Just discovered him via a curiosity-driven dimeadozen download and then Mysterious Production of Eggs. Here's the dime link: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=88819 Was surprised to see no one was seeding, so I opened up the torrent in case anybody's interested. Great show, even if the DJ talks too much.
Damn: now the Cubs have men on first and third with one out.
"Projectile management is the essence of the quality of life" - Ted Nugent |
| a guy in a rover |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 17:22:04
quote:
Originally posted by Cult_Of_Frank
I'll check 'em out since you obviously think they're great.
You do that Dean. And remember, if you buy a CD and dont like it, rover will refund your money. I guaruntee it!
A pig or a goat well, they wouldn’t let you be mistreated
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| Carl |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 10:39:08
quote:
Originally posted by El Loco
I just heard a song from their 2004 release. You can keep Richard Marx all to yourself.
He was the least known of the brothers.
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| Cult_Of_Frank |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 09:23:49
I'll check 'em out since you obviously think they're great.
 "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." |
| El Loco |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 09:07:29
I just heard a song from their 2004 release. You can keep Richard Marx all to yourself. |
| El Loco |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 09:03:40
It's funny how fans get too fanatical and think of their faves as being so friggin' great. The blue nile, never heard of them. Will they curl my fro? Will they Pomp my Pompadore? Will it boogie woogie on my brain? Link an mp3 and await the bashing or praise.
"not everything the beatles did was good"
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| a guy in a rover |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 09:01:16
To encourage you a little bit, here are some snippets of what the critics make of The Blue Nile:
Some just don't get it. Then there are those of us, more than you might think, who fall silent, cross themselves and genuflect whenever they're mentioned. If they speak to you, if you feel them, The Blue Nile's soulful, resolute records are as exquisite as records get.
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
Reviews of High, their latest album:
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
The emotive, yearning vocals and chilling tunesmanship of Paul Buchanan plus the band's poignant, minimalist arrangements make for a combination that is both sublime and heartbreaking.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Rejoice, acolytes--the Scottish priests of midnight yearning are back with their first CD in eight years, their fourth in 21, and their best since 1989's Hats. If the lyrics now take in distant children and middle-aged loss, the music remains the same: crystalline mid-tempo soundscapes in which regret and ecstasy twine into a spiritual double helix. "An ordinary miracle is all we really need," croons Paul Buchanan. This will do
CHICAGO SUN TIMES
Paul Buchanan and his mates in the Blue Nile are not going to knock anyone's socks off with their productivity. Over some 20 years, after all, they've been good for only three albums.
But with this effort, Buchanan, Robert Bell and Paul Joseph Moore demonstrate what was sometimes so right about '80s pop. Moody, swirling keyboards wash across the backdrop to Buchanan's attention-commanding vocals, framing them but never overwhelming them. Buchanan does his part as both singer and songwriter, offering authoritative but tender vocal performances to go with honest, literate and compelling lyrics, most notably on the stirring "I Would Never".
4 stars
Richard Williams
Friday August 13, 2004
THE GUARDIAN
In his original sleeve note to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, the pianist Bill Evans compared the method by which that album was made to the procedure followed by a certain kind of Japanese calligraphic artist: an inordinate amount of care over the selection and preparation of materials followed by a fleeting moment of creation in which nothing can be repeated and nothing erased. Sometimes simplicity is the hardest thing of all to bring off.
The songs on High, the fourth album from the Blue Nile, give no clue that they took eight years to create. So exquisite as to be almost transparent, they sound like the result of a few quick brush-strokes. Eight years, however, is the gap between the new recording and its predecessor, Peace At Last. In turn, Peace At Last came seven years after Hats. And Hats followed A Walk Across the Rooftops, their debut, by six years.
This time, at least, there is a practical reason for the lengthy period of gestation: an ME-type illness kept Paul Buchanan, their singer and guitarist, out of action for a couple of years. Nevertheless, there is something magnificent about the sheer doggedness of the Blue Nile's adherence to the unorthodox trajectory of their singular career. The group's three members - Buchanan, Robert Bell and PJ Moore - have produced for public consumption a mere 33 songs in just over 20 years. But their impact has far exceeded that of many more productive outfits, and by distilling such limited quantities of a particular emotional essence, they have encouraged a loyal following.
Existential melancholy is the mode they explored in A Walk Across the Rooftops and Hats. In songs such as Tinseltown in the Rain and The Downtown Lights, Buchanan evoked urban solitude with greater precision than any singer since the mid-1950s Sinatra. The Blue Nile made torch songs for the Thatcher years, and they turned the lean, floppy-haired Buchanan into an enigmatic archetype.
Such an image tends to persist, particularly when time passes and the subject remains lean and floppy-haired. "It probably comes across like I'm the man in the car advert," Buchanan admits in an interview in the current issue of Uncut magazine, "with the big raincoat, walking in the rain, and all of that." But there is more to him, and to the Blue Nile, than a particular strain of stylish gloom, and those prepared to hang around after the popular success of Hats discovered that its successor marked a considerable change of tone. While making Peace At Last, they downplayed the neon-lit synth washes and the robotic drum machines with which they had evoked the alienation and the relentless beat of modern city life. More open and organic sounds, including finger-picked acoustic guitar and a choir, were matched to a set of unashamedly optimistic lyrics celebrating family, community, peace, faith and love.
What made the new combination work, even for those besotted by the earlier headlights-in-the-rain ballads, was that while he celebrated the consolations of life, Buchanan still sounded like a man on the edge of an emotional precipice. The sound of his voice - mostly a murmur in the listener's ear, occasionally vaulting up to a heart-aching upper register - told his listeners that this was the same guy who had gazed through the window of the late-night train and seen only the emptiness of his own existence. "Now that I've found peace at last," he sang, "tell me, Jesus, will it last?" He was waiting for an answer, knowing that a false step might mean a plunge into the abyss.
Although High marks another shift of mood, its ingredients are familiar enough. Now, however, the emotional commitment of Peace At Last is combined with the observational detachment of the earlier work. So while Buchanan is still watching the world through a window - in the opening song, The Days of Our Lives, the window belongs to someone else - his eye has grown more compassionate.
Almost all of these nine songs are so well turned as to validate his claim that the group discarded "hundreds" more while preparing the material for High. The exception is Everybody Else, a curious, uneventful trifle. Otherwise the Blue Nile's gift for an impassioned chord change is frequently in evidence, along with the instrumental economy that was such a telling feature of the previous album.
With three songs in particular they touch their peak. The glorious descending melody of Because of Toledo carries a western narrative full of fractured, inconclusive images: "Girl leans on a jukebox/ In a pair of old blue jeans/ Says, 'I don't live here/ But I don't really live anywhere'..." The urgent She Saw the World is propelled by the kind of mid-tempo 4/4 that pushes ahead of the beat (think of the Beatles' Things We Said Today or the Stones' Honky Tonk Woman) under pensive, hovering strings - a magical contrast. The closing track, Stay Close, emerges from a shimmer of what sound like Mellotron strings and woodwind (but are probably something far more expensive), turning a momentary thought and a snatch of melody into a quiet hymn that concludes with a stately diminuendo.
In pop, most people do their best work within five or six years. How extraordinary, then, that after more than two decades of activity, the Blue Nile remain on course, their range expanded, their focus more refined, unshaken in their determination to proceed at their own measured pace.
Live:
5 stars
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
David Peschek
Tuesday May 30,
THE GUARDIAN
Long time, no see," is the inevitable call from the crowd, when the applause for Paul Buchanan's entrance finally dies down. "So," he says, looking overwhelmed, "no pressure, then." This, a de facto Blue Nile show, billed otherwise due to the absence of one member, marks the band's first tour in a decade; their recent album High was the first for a similar stretch. Blue Nile fans have to learn patience. They know they may not see their hero again for a very long time. "Rags to Riches - before I die," calls out one desperate punter.
Surprisingly, given the band's notoriously slow work rate, they play two new songs, and sashay through Strangers in the Night, Buchanan living up to his reputation as the Scottish Sinatra. His gorgeous, weathered, expansive croon swoons through this spacious, elegant music: metronomic percussion, clipped, abstracted funk guitar that chimes and glistens hypnotically, and powerful, low bass detonations. The best songs - A Walk Across the Rooftops, The Downtown Lights, a good two thirds of the set, in fact - generate incredible emotional force, not least through the deceptively simple, dream-like quality of Buchanan's lyrics.
Then there's Tinseltown in the Rain, jewel among jewels on the Blue Nile's extraordinary first album. The crowd sings along at Buchanan's invitation, something that would usually be an annoyance beyond words, but here it is pure euphoric celebration. "Do I love you?" he asks. "Yes, I love you," we chorus back, and then the bittersweet sucker-punch: "Will we always be happy go lucky?" There is no other body of song in popular music that so exquisitely crystallises the yearning, terror, uncertainty and rapture of love. If another 10 years pass before Buchanan steps out on to a stage again, it will be worth the wait.
A pig or a goat well, they wouldn’t let you be mistreated
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| Llamadance |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 08:47:19
Broken Land (?) was good :) - [edit] oops, that was The Adventures :D
[edit2] - Tinseltown in the Rain was what I was thinking of.
Pain is temporary, quitting is forever.
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