High
Some eight barren years have elapsed since Glasgow's nocturnal melancholics the Blue Nile last tendered a studio album. However, patience is a virtue and "High"--which features material conceived and recorded over a ten year period, including a song once gifted to a formerSpice Girl--yields a generous dividend for prostrate audiophiles and sleepwalking nighthawks alike. Like a far-away comet circling the universe in sublime and yet static perpetuity, the Blue Nile maneuver impressively into view every few years having changed very little, a compliment which can scarcely be applied to many other artists in their profession. In the manner ofTalk Talk's Mark Hollis or Jackie Leven, Paul Buchanan's distressed utterances exude a downcast but romantic spirituality, mining a rich blue seam of fatigued detachment from the diaphragm upwards while somewhere in the background pianos, electronic drums, and subtle acoustic guitars pulse inconspicuously and yet with all the assurances of a heart steadily beating inside the chest. Eavesdropping on restaurant conversations, gazing at passing cars, looking at "the morning people going to work and fading away" is the stuff of cold, terminal exclusion but "High" is beautifully warm, offering the uncluttered quiescent orderliness of sonic Feng Shui for the soul. --Kevin Maidment