A Walk Across the Rooftops’ first single, and one of Buchanan’s more enigmatic lyrics, Stay is filled with inscrutable images from its opening line, “I’m taking off this party hat”, onwards: “Red guitar is broken,” “Candy girls want candy boxes,” “Summer girls in disarray/ Can be so free and easy now.” “ Stay, I think, is a more straightforwardly romantic song,” Buchanan informed Johnnie Walker. “I think maybe at the same point the protagonist is reflecting on something simple that he’s lost within himself, and that’s the grounds for his appeal.” In 2006, Buchanan had a top 10 hit in the UK when he featured on Texas' song, " Sleep", which reached No. 6. Holmes, Tim (26 September 1985). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across The Rooftops". Rolling Stone. No.457. pp.101–102. Archived from the original on 24 August 2007 . Retrieved 11 September 2011.

From his perspective, Tiefenbrun later pointed out admiringly, “Nothing would persuade them to do anything other than what they were doing,” but the band have disputed their reputation for perfectionism. In 1981, the band recorded their debut single, the cheerful but still restrained I Love This Life. It was soon passed on to RSO Records, home to the Bee Gees, by Calum Malcolm, a young engineer. It became apparent during the recording of High that old tensions among the band members had resurfaced. Buchanan's comments in a 2012 interview seemed to indicate that the album was finished out of a sense of duty and loyalty rather than any willingness to do so. "When we eventually finished High, I don't think it was bristling with the same joy and naivety we'd felt when we started. We'd gathered ourselves long enough to make it. It seemed to me a stoic record, to some extent a record about ourselves, though I didn't realise that 'til later. It was a collected and fairly stoic record which I was proud of and, in a sense, we just made ourselves focus. We showed up, we went into the room and worked, and whatever drift had set in we were loyal to each other and we knew we had to form the wagons into a circle." [16] Despite the movement of the music, Hats is an album in stasis. The Blue Nile understand that, like all good theater, relationships are inextricably linked to their setting, and the characters on Hats are prisoners to it, escaping only in fantasy. “Walk me into town/The ferry will be there to carry us away into the air,” Buchanan sings in “Over the Hillside.” “Let’s walk in the cool evening light/Wrong or right/Be at my side,” he pleads in “The Downtown Lights.” “I pray for love coming out all right,” he sings in the climactic final verse of “Let’s Go Out Tonight.” Then he cries out the title as one final desperate attempt to save something that’s already gone.Selling Out": A Premiere and Interview with Duncan Sheik, Plus Introducing Darlingside, and Exclusives by Jaye Bartell and Hugh Cornwell". HuffPost. 18 September 2015 . Retrieved 1 January 2022. The album was recorded over five months in 1983 at Castlesound Studios, which Malcolm had set up in 1979 in the former primary school building in the village of Pencaitland, 12 miles (19km) east of Edinburgh. Living first in a rented flat in Edinburgh, and then later sleeping on Malcolm's floor when their money ran out, the band laboured over the album because all the sounds on the record had to be created and played physically. The band also had exacting standards and obsessed about every detail on the album: Malcolm recalled that "they were always particularly sensitive to not doing the wrong thing and making sure it had absolutely the right emotional impact: there were times when I'm sure everyone else felt something was done and then someone would throw a spanner in the works over some little thing". [5] Release [ edit ] In 1989 Record Mirror placed A Walk Across the Rooftops at number 74 in its critics' list of the best albums of the 1980s. [33] The Guardian included A Walk Across the Rooftops in their 2007 feature 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die, saying, "This stunning debut album was an 80s high-water mark ... The arrangements meld electro and contemporary classical influences into a rich and satisfyingly yearning whole." [34] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. [35] a b White, Timothy (20 April 1996). "The Blue Nile: A Separate 'Peace' ". Billboard. Vol.108, no.16. New York City, USA: Nielsen Company. p.5. Harris, Bob (presenter) (20 May 2012). Paul Buchanan interview with Bob Harris (radio broadcast). London, England: BBC Radio 2.

Having put out their debut single "I Love This Life" in 1981, the Blue Nile spent the next couple of years playing gigs in their native Glasgow: with little money and due to singer Paul Buchanan's limited ability on the guitar, by necessity their songs were stripped-down cover versions of old songs, and as Buchanan later said, "I suppose to some extent that started to bleed into our own songs – there was more and more space in what we were doing". Buchanan and Robert Bell's songs would start out written on an acoustic guitar or a piano, and then together with third member Paul Joseph "PJ" Moore and engineer Calum Malcolm the songs would be rearranged in the studio. [5] While their influence has long run deep, with outspoken fans including Vashti Bunyan, Phil Collins, and the 1975, to this day nothing sounds quite like Hats. The Blue Nile themselves never quite replicated it, opting for a loose, soulful atmosphere on 1996’s Peace At Last and a more sober approach for 2004’s High. Its closest companion is Paul Buchanan’s 2012 solo album Mid Air—a collection of near-demos on piano that further refined his sunken vignettes. “Tear stains on your pillow,” he sings in “Wedding Party,” “I was drunk when I danced with the bride.” The stories—as with most concerning the Blue Nile—are between the lines.Harrison, Ian (January 2013). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops / Hats". Q. No.318. p.117. Drummers, Buchanan confessed to Popmatters’ Jennifer Kelly in 2013, were a particular problem. “We’d rehearse for months and months and months and then do one gig and the drummer would get a job or move away. I think one day, something like that had happened and the three of us were just kind of sitting down looking at each other and thinking, ‘Ah, let’s start again. You know what, let’s just see if the three of us can do it.’” In June 1996, seven years after Hats, the Blue Nile released a third album, entitled Peace at Last. It displayed a marked difference in style to the first two albums, with Buchanan's acoustic guitar work more to the fore. Buchanan recalled that he had bought the guitar in a New York music shop, and by coincidence Robert Bell had seen the guitar earlier the same day and called Buchanan to tell him about it. [16] A gospel choir made a brief appearance on the first single, " Happiness". Despite the release of Peace at Last on a major label, critical reaction to the album was more mixed than for the band's previous records, [4] although sales were good, entering the UK album chart at #13. Roberts, Chris (21 November 2012). "Review: The Blue Nile – A Walk Across the Rooftops Collector's Edition". BBC Music . Retrieved 12 April 2013. Like the later work of the like-minded, if dramatically dissimilar, Talk Talk – whose Mark Hollis once famously said, “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note… and don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it” – the record embraces peace and quiet so much they’re virtually its central focus. Its poignant sentimentality, meanwhile, skilfully, solemnly swerves the saccharine.

Brown, Allan (15 November 2012). "Easy does it for The Blue Nile". The Scotsman. Edinburgh, Scotland: Johnston Press . Retrieved 4 April 2013. By 1990, however, Irish broadcaster Dave Fanning was suggesting on air that 80,000 copies had been shifted. “It’s sold a lot more than that, actually,” Buchanan modestly corrected him. “I think we just don’t want to attract attention to any thoughts about ourselves.”

Tracklist

Dolan, Karen J. (October 1985). "The Blue Nile: A Walk Across the Rooftops". Spin. Vol.1, no.6. p.31 . Retrieved 7 January 2022. The Blue Nile's highest chart placement came when " Tinseltown in the Rain" reached No. 28 in the Netherlands in 1984, their only Dutch charting song. The band has had four top 75 hits on the UK Singles Chart, the highest being " Saturday Night" which reached No. 50 in 1991. In the United States, " The Downtown Lights" was its only chart entry, peaking at No. 10 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart. Brown, Allan (2011). Nileism: The Strange Course of the Blue Nile. Polygon Books. ISBN 978-1-84697-185-3. McGalliard, James (15 December 2004). "An Ordinary Miracle". Inpress. Melbourne, Australia: Street Press Australia. They only made four albums in 20 years, so The Blue Nile’s every record is precious. but the Scottish trio’s debut, A Walk Across The Rooftops, offered an as yet unsurpassed strain of sober but stirring synth-pop…