It’s been eight years since the critically adored, secret Glaswegian treasure The Blue Nile released an album and, the way lead singer Paul Buchanan tells it, there’s no sign of another one on the horizon. You mightn’t guess it given the glacial, perfectionist’s pace he works at (four immaculate albums in three decades), but the singer has been eager to get back to work. And so we have this solo venture, consisting of 14 relatively brief, piano-led diamonds.
Buchanan has been quick to call this a “record-ette”, defining it as one that’s not competing with his band’s formidable back catalogue. That’s smart, because it doesn’t carry the weight of the likes of A Walk Across The Rooftops or Hats. Here, we are offered a stripped-down sound, shorn of the unique synth landscapes of those records. But it clearly comes from the same rich source. That tender, tearful Scottish croon is in place, as are the themes of everyday life, and the over-arching mission to make the mundane seem glorious.
It’s all in the details. The opener and title-track’s lyric, “The buttons on your collar, the colour of your hair, I think I see you everywhere”, might have been designed to sum up his romantic modus operandi. ‘Newsroom’ captures the unexpected poignancy of an empty office. Elsewhere, people dance drunkenly at a wedding, a couple raise their two children, someone drinks a coke.
Slow and wistfully reflective, it’s understatement might leave some cold, but if you give yourself to Mid Air, it soon reveals hidden depths. Despite their ostensibly slender frames, each song exudes enormous emotional power, documenting the POV of a middle-aged man lost in bittersweet memories. We seem happy, Buchanan appears to croon with a knowing half-smile, but who are we kidding? Mid Air is one to savour.