Who Do You Love? (24/3/13)

Bought a new set of speakers for the iPod yesterday. Lovely set of Marley 'Get Up Stand Up's. Real quality sound, warm, fantastic separation, each instrument totally distinct, amazing clarity.

And, as both the kids are upstairs on their 360s and J and I have downstairs to ourselves, I'm giving them a bit of a test with The Blue Nile's utterly glorious 'Hats' album.

The Blue Nile are, as I may have mentioned previously, just a little bit special. Four band albums and one solo album by lead singer Paul Buchanan  since 1982; every one of them beautiful but the first two absolute masterpieces...

I bought the first album upon release based purely on a stunning review in Melody Maker. One of the few occasions that I've bought something without hearing a single note. I wasn't disappointed. It was everything that the review had suggested; stately, at odds with almost everything that was going on around it, warm, human, filled with love and loss and regret and redemption. Everything an album should be.

'Hats' was overdue when it finally landed in late 1989, back in the day when a six year gap between albums was a lifetime rather than a brief interruption in a career. Bizarrely it was viewed as something of a disappointment at the time as it wasn't a direct reproduction of their 'A Walk Across The Rooftops' debut. It was slower, quieter, more reflective, the songs appeared more straightforward. It's actually superior to its predecessor. It's a nighttime album, filled with visions of lonely lives conducted after dark, filled with seclusion, with songs of lost souls returning home. It's also marvellously uplifting. It lets you know that there's always hope, love will always win through. Paul Buchanan's yearning, plaintive "I Love You" in 'Headlights On The Parade"  is the most honest reading of a simple emotion that you could ever wish to hear. He follows this with the statement that "Only Love Will Survive."

It's an album that sounds like being in love.

And it reminds me of two things;

In 1989 I was managing our store in Hull. Our local Virgin rep (back in the days when record companies had sales reps on the road) was due to call in one afternoon. We received a phone call from his boss asking us to get him to ring home as his mother had taken ill. It was a little thing to do, nothing special, anyone would have passed the message on. If I recall correctly (and we're talking 23 years ago now) his mum sadly passed away.

On his first visit to the store after returning to work he came to me with a promotional version of 'Hats' - the CD in a hat box, packed with straw. A real fan piece. And he gave it to me as thanks for passing on the message. Every time I play the album I think of him. Wish I could remember his name.

And it reminds me that it was this 'hatbox' version of the album that sat on top of the small pile of CDs that me and J owned when we moved into our house in Leeds in December 1990. We were married in August of that year and this was the soundtrack to our first few months of marriage. This was our default Saturday night album. This was sitting in our small living room with our suite that we had bought from friends and our carpet that we had paid far too much for and our cat that had been a leaving present from J's workmates when she left Liverpool and our second cat who a friend in Hull had found stray on her step as a tiny kitten, watching films on VHS that we'd rent from a small video shop on the way home from work.

This album was the sound of starting a new life, making new friends, just being with each other. Being happy.

Paul Buchanan says it best on the last track of the album;

"An ordinary girl who'll make the world alright, she'll love me all the way, it's Saturday night."

The Blue Nile. Hats. It's ours. It's us.