I love them. Really, really love them.

I got into them in the summer of 2004. Mark Radcliffe, in one of his first 10.30pm-midnight slots on Radio 2 played Over The Hillside and it was love at first listen.

I bought Hats on what turned out to be the most traumatic day of my life so subsequent listens should have had a Pavlovian effect on me, but they didn't.

I embarked on a doomed love affair with a woman in the Lake District and, somewhat melodramatically, played From A Late Night Train on the last chugger from Oxenholme to Preston as my head rested on the window with drizzle lashing against the other side of it on the night she dumped me. I should hate that song because of that but I don't. I love it.

As the times got worse that year, the band stayed with me. The rest of the collection, bought in an instant on the day High was released that autumn, was loved too. They make me want to visit Glasgow and walk its streets with streetlights reflected in puddles. Their definition of love means so much more than Terry and Julie at Waterloo station on Friday night. They're just so evocative.

is magnificent, even by their own high standards. Invest!

fine by me when they can come up with this..

Have to agree with everything above, esp their sense of Glasgow.

Peace at Last in very good as infact is High (no idea why it seems ot be forgotten aboput so often in reviews of the band - yes it was revolutionary, but we would ahve been horrified if it was). If you like one I reckon you'll like all four.

I think I've posted about it here before, but I really enjoyed Allan Brown's book from last year about the band. It kind of explains a lot of the story, and tells you what to expect or not next.

Like you, Stephen, I've never really bothered with the subsequent ones. The songs I've heard are still quality, of course, but don't leave the same lasting impact on me for some reason.

Hats is just perfect. Probably still my favourite album of all time.

and can honestly say there is only one song I'm not that I don't adore (Holy Love, if you must know).

I heard Tinseltown In The Rain on the radio around the time the single bothered the charts. I have bought all the albums in the week they come out (which is no big effort really).

They are very special indeed.

to get into them with 'A Walk Across..' one of the few albums that I've ever bought totally unheard on the strength of a review and been justified. Saw them a few times live, each time stunning, Paul Buchanan's take on 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' is a joy to have experienced. I think I've heard Tinseltown in the Rain on the radio once in my life, it was in the car on the way to an old friends funeral and it genuinely lifted my heart. I read the book last year (wonderful xmas gift from my wife) and brilliantly came away knowing no more about the band than I did when I went in despite the depth of coverage in the book. They may release albums with the glacial pace of Scott Walker and they may never equal the first two (very few people could) but they're always worth the wait.

was excellent here's what I wrote at the time, it's a little purple in places but what the heck.

The Blue Nile
July 13th (2008)
Somerset house
London

One of the purposes of art is the revelation of the sublime, it’s everywhere in the way that Aretha passes the note and hits another, its being with Otis at 4.30 in the morning, it’s in the light of a Cezanne. But I am a northern soul in part and as much as I love the lime in a mohjto, the spark in the eye of a Goya or the warmth of the sea off Valencia my heart cleaves at times to a different light.

It’s a salt bleached road, the rasp of sandstone on your fingers, in the flat vowels of Hughes and Auden, in Hooky’s low bass, it’s in that moment as your lungs flatten out on the top of a hill in the heat of summer and the smell of grass washes over you, it’s the bang of a saloon bar door and the blue light of a minster’s rose window, the surge of taxi, the laughter of my nephews and nieces, the gentle breath of an intimate on your ear, their hand on your chest, it’s in Blake and Keats it’s the everyday come alive and dissolved into air like, like, like….

The first line of Easter Parade by the Blue Nile
“The line of traffic comes to a stand still”
It may sound banal in Arial 12 point but with the music and Paul Buchanan’s voice no traffic jam ever sounded so good as this one and this is just one verse of their 50 or so songs.

Last night at Somerset House was as near as perfect gig as I’ve ever seen, no second was wasted and in fact they sped by so fast it was heartbreaking.
Why a band so good and so seemingly so at ease on stage don’t play more often is perplexing? However although The Blue Nile’s tardiness is legion I’m not sure I would change it, as it would like having a fast growing oak or drinking day old Port something essential would be lost.

The Blue Nile are great for all of the above and much more, for their human failings and their ability to over come them.

I’ve been to many gigs and few were better than last night there maybe no future in Britain’s dreaming but while me may let’s just turn over one more time and dream a while longer.

Although they ended up costing me thousands as I first heard Walk Across The Rooftops at a hifi shop demonstrating a Linn Sondek. I went in to buy a Rega turntable and after hearing the first 60 seconds I walked out with an LP12!
I saw the at Somerset House a couple of years ago and it was one of those magical nights you only get once in a while. The weather that week had been rubbish but on that Sunday it was the perfect Summer Sunday evening.
For an Edinburgh boy he understands Glasgow so well and he stepped out with Rosanna Arquette!
"Over The Hillside" from Hats - perfection

Another thumbs-up from me for a voice that can raise goosbumps, songs that marry wistful melancholy with the optimism of the true romantic, and impeccable musicianship.

I enjoyed a memorable evening with Paul Buchanan's music at The Sage, Gateshead, in 2008 which, while billed as a solo show, was Blue Nile incarnate.

If you're interested in hearing PB stripped of the Blue Nile settings, try this (it looks incomplete, but will take you to an acoustic session dating back to 2004):

http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=mb04093...