Hats
Five years in the making and finished in a rush: seven songs that Stereogum called the sound of cities at night.
The Blue Nile, 1989
- Released
- October 1989
- Recorded
- 1984-89, mostly 1988
- Studio
- Castlesound Studios, Pencaitland
- Label
- Linn
- Producer
- The Blue Nile
- Length
- 38:26
Play on hypersongs (1)Play on hypersongs (2)
After the Gullane sessions failed, Buchanan said, they recorded but did not believe in what they had. The breakthrough came with The Downtown Lights, and back at Castlesound in 1988 he reckoned half the album took about a week. Pitchfork tied his sparer writing to the end of his parents' marriage. In America A&M enlarged the band's name on the cover and ran a Billboard advert offering a free CD to anyone who called.
It reached 12 in the UK and 108 on the Billboard 200. Q gave it five stars, Simon Reynolds in Melody Maker heard crystalline perfection, and Rolling Stone found Buchanan's range limited. AllMusic called it a triumph of personal vision over technology. It placed 92 in Q's 100 Greatest British Albums, and Pure Bathing Culture covered the whole record in 2018.
Track listing
- Over the Hillside5:03
- The Downtown Lights6:26
- Let's Go Out Tonight5:12
- Headlights on the Parade6:11
- From a Late Night Train3:59
- Seven A.M.5:09
- Saturday Night6:26
Personnel
- Paul Buchanan guitar, synthesizers, vocals
- Robert Bell bass, synthesizers
- PJ Moore keyboards, synthesizers
- Calum Malcolm engineering
More from The Blue Nile
A Walk Across the Rooftops (1984)
Sources
- Hats (album), Wikipedia
- The Blue Nile: Hats, Pitchfork (2018-01-07)
- Empty Streets, Empty Nights: Hats at 30, Stereogum (2019-10-17)
- Tinseltown In The Rain: The Blue Nile, Clash (2012)