The Blue Nile - High

Another lengthy hiatus, another Blue Nile album. Here Paul Buchanan revisits the same spot on the hillside overlooking the evening city lights, is still filled with the same surging, oblique melancholy and longing that has sustained The Blue Nile since 1984, is still crafting singularly mature MOR in a darker shade of turquoise all his own. This time, however, the overall return feels diminished in effect—"I Would Never", for instance, trespasses dangerously close to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Still, purchase of this is mandatory for the tolling, appalling beauty of the opener, "Days Of Our Lives", which must go down as one of the five greatest ever Nilesongs.

Rating: 4 / 10