The Blue Nile - Hats (1989)

Drugi album zespołu The Blue Nile z Glasgow wydany został w 1989 roku. Płyta uznawana przez krytyków za najlepszy album zespołu, jest to muzyka, która przetrwała próbę czasu i wciąż zaskakuje i wzbudza emocje. Renomowany Magazyn Q przyznał 5 gwiazdek w recenzji tej płycie, a w 2000 roku płyta znalazła się w zestawieniu 100 Największych Albumów Brytyjskich na pozycji 92. 'Hats' stał się także sukcesem komercyjnym, wylądował na miejscu 12 UK Album Charts, przyczyniły sie do tego trzy single wydane z tej płyty: "The Downtown Lights", "Headlights on the Parade" oraz "Saturday Night".

After a prolonged delay in which an entire album's worth of work was scrapped, The Blue Nile released Hats in 1989 to rave reviews, including a rare five-star rating from Q magazine. The album was recorded in the same studio as much of their previous work, Castlesound in Pencaitland, East Lothian. This album, which explores the highs and lows of romantic love, is considered by most critics and listeners to be the band's most enduring work. At the time, Hats reached #12 on the UK album charts and even slipped into the Billboard 200 in the United States. Rickie Lee Jones, a huge fan of the band, personally selected The Blue Nile as her opening act for her 1990 tour. She would later record a duet with them, a cover of the band's own "Easter Parade", which was featured as a B-side to the single "Headlights on the Parade".
Their second album, "Hats", has been published on CD and I am not sure it ever made it to vinyl. The Linn Records site displays no trace of this. Anyway, I'm about to write a few notes on the CD release only. From a purely musical point of view the album "Hats" is a mixture of slow-tempoed Pop Music, with very simple rythmic patterns. Imagine a standard Pop song, strip it down to its elementary skeleton, let it walk :-) and you get quite close. Just like a painter can use very few brush strokes to create a visual emotion, so this duo could create amazingly precious songs with just few things. Back in 1989, this album sounded like something absolutely new. 15 years later it is still stunning and fresh, especially if you consider the Blue Nile peculiar composing style remained unique. In addiction to the composing duo (Buchanan & Bell) Paul Joseph Moore (keyboards) and (later) Nigel Thomas (drums) completed the band line-up. From a merely "audiophile" point of view, this album, like the debut release, is very interesting. First of all, it is an ADD recording, this means the master tape was 100% analogue (Recording engineer: Calum Malcolm). As audiophiles, we are used to mass-oriented, loudness-like recorded Pop music albums. They seem to be intended mainly for teenagers with over-distorted ghetto-blasters. Hence, this "Hats" came as a nice surprise: just 7 classy, elegant and intimate Pop songs that can fully exploit every good HiFi system potential.



1 Over The Hillside
2 The Downtown Lights
3 Let's Go Out Tonight
4 Headlights On The Parade
5 From A Late Night Train
6 Seven A. M.
7 Saturday Night