Hats

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Holden, Stephen (30 July 1990). "Review/Pop; The Blue Nile's Mystical, Majestic Ballads". The New York Times. New York . Retrieved 7 February 2023. Now remastered (for once, the sound being both brittle and big, that null word has value) and reissued with added rarities (as is its sublime 1989 successor, Hats), its hopeful melancholy transcends its era like an Edward Hopper painting. Synthesisers, the 80s’ new toy, abound, but are used with such naïve grace, over rhythms both simple and circuitous, that they refuse to date. Despite recurring spikes of interest and occasional attempts at exposing more listeners to the catalog — expanded remasters of their albums appeared earlier this decade, and new vinyl reissues were recently announced — there is something about the Blue Nile that makes them feel as if they will always be a secret buried in time. They’re the sort of transfixing and elusive artist where, when you first discover them, you will alternate between telling everyone you’ve ever known about them with the fervor of an evangelist, and retreating to protect this precious thing you have found. There’s a way in which their music can very much feel like its your own, not to be shared with anyone. That you can only discuss it with the sort of hushed awe from which it seems to be born.

Still a landmark, still high, still somehow intangible: The Blue Nile didn’t sound or function like any normal band. Hats was voted number 345 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). [24] Q placed Hats at number 92 on its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever" in 2000 and at number 38 on its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s" in 2006. [25] [26] Legacy [ edit ] Sodomsky, Sam (27 November 2018). "The 1975's Matty Healy Dissects Every Song on A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 11 January 2021 . Retrieved 23 February 2021. a b Thigpen, David (17 May 1990). "The Blue Nile: Hats". Rolling Stone. No.578. New York. p.149. Archived from the original on 2 October 2007 . Retrieved 1 October 2015.Tavakoli, Mina (20 November 2020). "Almost anarchy: The Style Council and the smooth sounds of sophisti-pop". The Washington Post . Retrieved 21 April 2021.

Despite the movement of the music, Hats is an album in stasis. The Blue Nile understand that, like all good theater, relationships are inextricably linked to their setting, and the characters on Hats are prisoners to it, escaping only in fantasy. “Walk me into town/The ferry will be there to carry us away into the air,” Buchanan sings in “Over the Hillside.” “Let’s walk in the cool evening light/Wrong or right/Be at my side,” he pleads in “The Downtown Lights.” “I pray for love coming out all right,” he sings in the climactic final verse of “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” Then he cries out the title as one final desperate attempt to save something that’s already gone. In more recent years, their name seems to keep reappearing — maybe not more frequently, exactly, but perhaps a new generation is finding them. Or, as impossible as it seems for anyone to sound like the Blue Nile, maybe their influence is more significant this time around. Artists with as much history as Destroyer and as freshly exciting as Westerman have been compared to them. The 1975’s Matty Healy has talked about listening to Hats constantly while crafting last year’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships; this year, Natasha Khan, an artist obviously well-versed in the ’80s, mentioned discovering them for the first time while working on the new Bat For Lashes album Lost Girls. Pure Bathing Culture covered the entirety of Hats last year; they were joined by Ben Gibbard on a couple songs. A couple months later, fellow Scots Chvrches offered their own rendition of “The Downtown Lights.” And Buchanan still reemerges as a co-writer from time to time, most recently on Jessie Ware’s Glasshouse in 2017. Hats featured strongly on the end of year critics' lists, making number eight on Melody Maker 's albums of the year list, [21] and number 18 on NME 's list. [22] "The Downtown Lights" was also placed at number 15 on Melody Maker 's singles of the year list. [23] The members of the Blue Nile met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. After graduating and easing into an uninspiring teaching gig, Buchanan says he and his friends turned to music in search of a career that they “could be instinctive about.” With Buchanan on guitar and vocals, Paul Joseph “PJ” Moore on keyboards and synth, and Robert Bell on bass, they recruited a drum machine as their fourth member.Stay and Heatwave are heroically restrained; Easter Parade and Automobile Noise are elegies full of ghosts and blood. The previously unreleased St. Catherine’s Day is as sad and beautiful as can be. Both this and Hats still take the top of your head off, gently. Hats peaked at number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. [8] Three singles were released from the album: the first, " The Downtown Lights", was released in September 1989 and peaked at number 67 on the UK Singles Chart, followed by " Headlights on the Parade" in September 1990 which reached number 72, and " Saturday Night" in January 1991, which reached number 50. [8]