"Some art changes how we see the world. It catalyzes our politics or broadens our ambition, imparts empathy or disillusionment. But some art changes how we see ourselves. For certain listeners, hearing the Blue Nile for the first time activates a part of your brain that exists beyond language and between emotions. It's the same part that fills in the source of pain between the lines of a Raymond Carver story or maps the road from season's greetings to profound melancholy in Vince Guaraldi's"
""The moments that sustain you during the more humdrum aspects of what we do. Maybe it's the middle of the night and you look at your husband, your wife, and you know that you love them." With his multi-instrumentalist bandmates, PJ Moore and co-songwriter Robert Bell, Buchanan zooms into these exchanges to prolong them or dissembles them into jagged pieces that leave the bigger picture to us."
"In a stately baritone that occasionally loses its composure as a strained bellow, Buchanan guides us through the grayscale skyline, the redstone buildings, the tower of St. Stephen's Church. Surveying the landscape of his hometown and backed by the Scottish National Orchestra, he introduces himself with a vow. "I am in love/I am in love with you," goes the chorus, simple words complicated and made real by the creeping, slow-building arrangement."
The Blue Nile's music activates a nonverbal emotional center that links love and loss, life and death, and exposes the lonesome silence beneath urban life. Paul Buchanan's fragile, stately vocals convey intimate moments of connection and sustain quiet, profound feelings. PJ Moore and Robert Bell shape slow-building, spacious arrangements that either prolong emotional exchanges or fragment them into jagged pieces. Songs are rooted in Glasgow details that ground atmosphere while leaving space for listener immersion. The band's 1984 debut uses orchestral backing and restrained, stop-start textures to complicate simple vows and amplify unspoken longing.
Read at Pitchfork
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