Pretty much every week I listen to The Blue Nile’s Hats. There are few richer pleasures than driving at night through Glasgow listening to this record. If it’s raining, it’s a balm like few other things.
It’s a record that has carried me through a lot. I think it made me want to marry a Scottish woman. If Scottish women can break a boy’s heart and make him write songs like that, I thought of Paul Buchanan, Blue Nile’s creative force, then they must be quite something. They are, of course.
I mention this partly because the album is 30 years old next week, so I was set on a train of thought. Thirty years. Time bends, as Arthur Miller said. And we look back and look forward, and compare things to what we know now to how we viewed time back then.
But also because great music, when it arrives, can transport and soothe like no other art.
Inevitably, I’m going to mention Brexit.
No matter how often you hear it, that music has the power to knock you sideways and make you alter where you are
Like you, I follow the waves and signals of Brexit intently. I try to discern what will happen, like it’s a newly uncovered language we’re learning as we go. What will be right, what will be gained, what will be lost, what does each new iteration of change mean? And I’m increasingly of the opinion that nobody knows a damn thing.
