Customer Reviews

Hats

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this on CD in 1989 at the age of 14, based on a glowing review in Stereo Review magazine. I could not find it in the small town I lived in, and had to wait until a family trip to Portland afforded a visit to Tower Records, where it was on sale for $9.99. I plugged my headphones into my brand new Sony Discman and was astonished at what I heard--the weary hope of Paul Buchanan's voice; the sophisticated but passionate music; the shimmering and contemporary yet untrendy production; string arrangements to make you cry; the evocative lyrical word-paintings depicting love and hope both lost and found and the way rain looks on a city street at night. This album was a revalation for me. I spent many a sleepless night listening to it on headphones growing up. Most of the albums I bought in the 80's slowly drifted out of rotation, but this one has always been a go-to disc, particularly in the nighttime hours. Almost everyone I have played it for loves it, especially my wife, who finds it very relaxing and comforting. This album has stood the test of time--in fact I think it sounds less gimmicky and dated than their 2004 release. Some people have complained of the simplicity of the lyrics and the repetition of similar themes from song to song. I think that this album is the most effective of all Blue Nile releases at creating images in the listener's mind and imparting feelings and memories that are beyond words, much like an impressionistic or expressionistic painting can say so much more emotionally and experientially than a realistic painting or photograph can. This album is for anyone who has been hurt by love but dared to love again; for anyone who stayed up all night thinking about what they were going to say to her tomorrow--or should have said today; for anyone who wants so despirately to believe in something true and beautiful again; for anyone who has ever watched the world go by from a midnight train and felt the ache of every sleeping soul it passed; for anyone willing to think and feel and love.

Fifteen years out, it is the rare piece of popular music that stands the test of time. I've got thousands of CDs in my collection. For me, Hats is indeed one of those very few recordings, if only for the tone of this terrific album.

Tracks like The Downtown Lights, Over the Hillside, and Headlights on the Parade bring out a mellow, urbane, highly emotive sensibility: refined electronica set to sparse, sad, probing beats. Think of a soundtrack for walking along damp and foggy city streets on a late Sunday evening. This record says "Glasgow", even for someone who has never visited.

Can't precisely put my finger on it, but Paul Buchanan's voice cuts through everything. Sad but fulfilling, mellow yet uplifting.

For this listener, Hats is an absolute classic that still very much stands out in my collection. Many years from now, I can't help thinking that some smart music historian will closely listen to this one.

It's not so much that Hats or A Walk Across the Rooftops compete with each other for which is the best that the Blue Nile has released, but that they compliment each other in the richness with which they evoke heartfelt dreams, hope, fear, memory, and the passage of time.

Another must for anyone who longs, aspires, loves, or feels. An astonishing accomplishment I'd compare to the best of Sigur Ros, Roxy Music, or Hooverphonic. An underregarded masterpiece.

Paul Buchanan, lead singer and songwriter for The Blue Nile, sings like a wounded sparrow. There is such a fragile tensility that you expect him to break apart at any moment, at the same time you know with absolute certainty that he won't. "Hats" is an album that is in love with its subject and can't escape its own gorgeous abyss of urbane sadness. It is the kind of album that will have you seeing the dampness as it gathers around lonely after-hours street lights, wondering why the unexplained tears are welling just beneath the cool of your eyes and the tremble of your chin.

"Each time I fall for you, it hurts me a little bit more than I want it to." So Buchanan emotes from the lonely morning of "Seven A.M." It helps to listen to "Hats" with the lights low, to absorb the richness of the sound that surrounds the tortured beauty of The Blue Nile's world. There is the plea of "Let's Go Out Tonight," which could be easily sung to a moribund partner just as it could to the desperate soul who knows that the only thing waiting outside for him is more emptiness.

It's a perfectly ironic counterpoint that, swelling and building under and around all the songs on "Hats" is a shimmering sound that so many others have striven to find and so few have ever put to tape. It's the kind of sound that makes the "Blue" in the band's name so apt, as well as making this a "headphones only" kind of listening disc. Just don't let that stop you from allowing this river of sound to fill your room. For many of the same reasons I will always have copies of both Roxy Music's "Avalon" or Jeff Buckley's "Grace", The Blue Nile's "Hats" is on my desert island disc list.

It was actually just an accident that I found Blue Nile. I had bought a "Pure Mood" CD, and one of the songs on it was Blue Nile with "From a late night Train". When I came to the song, and it started, something inside me just became so relaxed, so peaceful and I found myself sitting in my comfy chair, that winter night, speechless. I had just heard my favorite song. Its not the song that needed several listenings. It was the song which just grabbed your heart and soul by the very core, and embraced it with music shaped for your ears.

I got hold of the album the very same night, and let me tell you this, I was totally transfixed. Lets dive in and study "Hats", Blue Nile`s best album.

"Over the Hillside". Listen to the beginning. From the moment it begins, you are immediately dragged into its soundscape. Its a comfortable, peaceful and relaxed atmosphere, and its a perfect introduction to Blue Nile`s world, where everything is, Blue. "Over the Hillside" is followed by my favorite on the album, "Downtown Lights". A bit more Upbeat, yet still a blue and moody song. The first Verse is the best part I`ve heard ever in a song. Its built up so wonderfully, the loneliness in his vocals, the haunting beat of the drum and the bass..Listen to that Synth. And the Trainlike rythm of the Drums. Incredible. Gets a bit tiresome all at the end, but it doesnt prevent it from being a superb and haunting song. Tuning things down abit is done with "Lets Go Out Tonight", a really moody and blue song. This is music with Soul. Somehow, Blue Nile manages to make such beautiful and peaceful music with so much variety and instruments. Bringing it back up a few notches is done with the optimistic and sweet "Headlights on the Parade", a really unique sounding piece that while being upbeat, doesnt stray from the relaxed atmosphere the cd brings. Next Star of the Show is the earlier mentioned "From a Late Night Train", and I dont think it needs any more explanations. A haunting piece built up by a lonely but relaxed Vocal, a backing synth and a Piano, all together for one of the most beautiful songs ever. "Seven A.M" is another good Song. Its blue and moody, another variant of "Headlights on the Parade", albeit a bit more hard to place. Its not as bright, its more somber, but still interesting due to the continous experimenting with sounds while keeping the good old soundscape. Coming up last, is the really sweet "Saturday Night". Its a combination between "Over the Hillside" and "Headlights on the Parade" but is a wonderful ending tune to such marvel of a Album.

The one thing that seperates "Hats" from the competition, is the soul and the sound. Once you have heard it, you can never, ever forget it. Most other music becomes simple when compared to the detailed yet comfortable style of Blue Nile. Wether you are in your comfy chair a winter`s night, or in the car or on a travel, or just want to feel good and relaxed, far away from real life, "Hats" By Blue Nile is the best album ever.

...I would rate it 20 stars if it was possible! Trust me, I own hundreds of records (ranging from jazz to experimental electronica, from pop to metal, etc.) and this one is among my few favourites! It's often indicated as the finest release of the '80s (but it doesn't really sound as if it was recorded in the '80s, it has got a melancholy, timeless flavour). Hats is a superb pop album with stunning vocals and dramatically beautiful music... It's an essential purchase for all music lovers.

P.S. The Downtown Lights, one of the best tracks, was also covered by Annie Lennox. Do yourself a favour and buy her Medusa album...

Originally released in 1989 as a brilliant transition away from the more eighties sound of the Scottish band, this beautiful work by the band led by the extraordinary singer Paul Buchanan simply stands up there with a few privileged albums that one can hear once and again, while sipping a good scotch or a nice glass of wine, with the lights off, while overlooking the city skyline with the breeze hitting you in the face. Graphical enough? Well, the truth is that this album constitutes (in my humble opinion) The Blue Nile's most brilliant musical accomplishment.

Perhaps the reason why the album fits so well the nighttime has to do, not only with the downbeat tempo it carries, but also with the recurrent theme of "night" and "light" all accross the songs. One of the most exquisite songs and my personal favorite was one whose reincarnation made it to the soundtrack of 'Six Feet Under' where Buchanan and Craig Armstrong perform a new arrangement of it. I am talking about "Let's Go Out Tonight."

Please do yourself a favor and grab a copy of this album. The only bad thing it has is that it only has seven songs, which makes it every bit as enjoyable as an aged drink to go with it. ;)

[It appears that this release is now only available as an import. I am copying my review I posted on the domestic release here as well, in case the domestic version is now out of print.]

To describe The Blue Nile's "Hats," I am compelled to use two words - "Brilliant" and "Blue." Brilliant, of course, is easily understood. Blue, however, gets at the truth and heart of this release. It is blue in its depth of emotion. It is blue in the cool liquidity of the vocals and orchestration. And it is blue in its strength and cohesiveness. Simply, it is a brilliant blue that has captured a part of my soul.

A brief history will help set the tone for my comments. I was first introduced to The Blue Nile in late 1989. It was my first year for a number of things - being at college, living away from my family and friends, having access to MTV. I was introduced to "The Downtown Lights" by MTV; it was a haunting, beautiful, emotional video that truly struck a chord in my heart. [As a side note, "The Downtown Lights" was released as a CD single with two unreleased tracks - "The Wires Are Down" and "Halfway to Paradise."] I was compelled to buy Hats on the strength of this song and video. The resulting emotions and lonely nights spent in the dark listening to this release helped define my emotional turmoil. And listening to this release 10 years later still has the same power and effect over me.

The release is most definitely "blue" in its depth of emotions. The "first side" trio (the tape release has the first three songs on side one and the last 4 songs on side two) is best enjoyed when one wants to be quiet, introspective, and cry solitary tears. "Over the Hillside" is deeply haunting and settles in the depth of your soul; "The Downtown Lights" pierces your heart with the refrain "How do I know you feel it," which I often found myself calling out; and "Let's Go Out Tonight" catches your breath and holds it, just as you hope it will take away and hold your pain. Now that I have the CD and can program the playlist, I would also add "From a Late Night Train," which embodies silence and loneliness. The remaining three songs, "Headlights on the Parade," "Seven A.M.," and "Saturday Night" all possess a more pronounced, slightly bouncy beat that have a more positive, almost upbeat tone to them. Still beautiful in their tone and simplicity, these songs allow the listener the catch a glimmer of hope and allow one to return from the depths of introspection.

Blue is also reflected in the smooth, calm, water-like flow of the vocals and orchestration. I typically prefer physical depth in my music, that of multiple layers of orchestration and harmonic vocals. However, in its simplicity, Hats has more depth than even my most beloved releases. Each note is easily discernable, melting among other notes and textures and the clear, haunting vocals of Paul Buchanan. The music is crystal clear in its clarity, and it allows one to peer into the depths of one's soul, much like seeing to the sandy bottom of Caribbean waters. The music is the trigger, and the listener empowers the music and emotions to wash over one and become engulfed in this moment of self-reflection.

The color blue also represents the strength and cohesiveness of Hats. Taking the term literally, you have the band name (The BLUE Nile), the sleeve design is predominantly blue, the CD is blue, and the video for "The Downtown Lights" was predominantly blue. Metaphorically, blue represents the emotion of the release, the water-like flow of the music, and the actual strength and power that the color connotes.

For these reasons, my own reasons, I feel Hats is The Blue Nile's crowning achievement. Hats became a part of my very being. After college, I searched out for other releases. With excitement I found A Walk Across the Rooftops, and Peace At Last was the first album I watched develop and waited for with baited breath over the Internet. However, while good releases, these never developed the powerful connection that I have with Hats. All The Blue Nile's releases might be brilliant, but only Hats, for me, is "brilliant blue," owning a permanent place in my heart, my soul, my life.

You may not have quite the similar emotional reaction I did to this release. However, if you love music, and if you love to allow yourself to "feel" music, give Hats a listen. You too might find this release to be one of those rare gems that helps define oneself in this roller coaster of emotions and events we call love and life.

I picked up this disc on a friend's recommendation after a long, hectic work day. She merely said it contained some gorgeous songs, so I wasn't prepared to become so absorbed in the music. The opening track, "Over the Hillside" is quite possibly one of the most enchanting pop songs I've ever heard. I happened to be passing by a small airport covered in a blanket of fog and the trumpet calls harkened to me like the swirling beacon lights directing air traffic to the ground. The lush orchestration backing the emotive trumpet line evoked strong memories from my past. The whole album touches you in a way that will draw you closer to your current love interest or stir old flames. "The Downtown Lights" has a great driving rhythm that serves as a perfect compliment to the passionate, well thought lyrics. The songs initially appear to have a somber tone, but they are compelling and full of passion. Paul Buchanan possesses a unique and expressive voice that fits perfectly into each song. The musical arrangements are beautiful and the Blue Nile takes time to develop themes that remain interesting throughout. Each song is a treasure. I have been pleasantly surprised by the "staying" power of this disc - I enjoy it as much today - more than ten years later - as I did during the maiden voyage.

I always thought of myself as being pretty much in touch with a large variety of music. How could I have not heard of The Blue Nile? I'm not even sure how I stumbled across this phenominal sound in the past month...
Upon hearing two or three cuts from this CD, I immediately ordered it, and High, Peace At Last and A Walk Across the Rooftops. Hat's is definately my favorite of all four. All are great though. No other band has instantly soared to the very top of my All Time Favorite Bands list.
All the reviews I read of this cd were right on the money. I too am reminded of Bruce when hearing some songs. I am moved to tears when I listen to Let's Go Out Tonight. Paul Buchanan's soulful voice is so gut wrenchingly beautiful, it DOES touch the very core of my soul. Even my 16 year old daughter requested that I burn some songs onto a disc for her...and that speaks volumes to me.
I regret that I didn't hear about The Blue Nile when they first emerged; but what a priceless buried treasure I have just discovered.