Newsroom Records | UK | 2 x CD | 2012 | ROOMX01

Paul Buchanan: Mid Air UK 2xCD [2012]

CD 1

1. Mid Air
2. Half The World
3. Cars In The Garden
4. Newsroom
5. I Remember You
6. Buy A Motor Car
7. Wedding Party
8. Two Children
9. Summer’s On Its Way
10. My True Country
11. A Movie Magazine
12. Tuesday
13. Fin De Siècle
14. After Dark

CD 2

1. Have You Ever Been Lonely?
2. My True Country [inst.]
3. After Dark [inst.]
4. Two Children [inst.]
5. Lost [I Remember You inst.]
6. Tuesday [inst.]
7. Half The World [alt.]
8. A Movie Magazine [inst.]
9. Mid Air [alt.]
10. God Is Laughing

You may remember that I announced this album several months ago, prior to its May 28 release. I had pre-ordered the limited edition boxed version, which had handily sold out in pre-release, so when it arrived about a week after the new Ultravox album, I was already hip-deep in listening and re-listening to the Ultravox oeuvre for the purposes of the long-winded Rock GPA® that I just wrapped up last week. It was frustrating not being able to listen to the Buchanan record, but I didn’t want to break focus. As it turns out, better that I should have. While the new Ultravox album was so wanting, it managed to sever 32 years of fandom, this one reminds me why I loved The Blue Nile in the first place, even though it sounds very different on the face of it.

Buchanan has recorded these songs with himself playing all of the instruments, but this is no Todd Rundgren flash move here. Instrumentation is spartan, consisting of piano and the occasional textural wash of synth “strings” or “horn.” More than anything, this new album seems like taking the Blue Nile B-side “Regret” and extrapolating a whole album from that piece. What that means is that here you get none of the sense of spacious panorama that typified most of the material on “A Walk Across The Rooftops” but instead the intimacy that was at the heart of “Regret,” which was also almost all down to Buchanan, piano, and mood.

He wastes no time in commanding the listener’s attention when the opening title cut kicks in. With a virtually cold opening, one is immediately drawn into Buchanan’s world as he sings:

“The buttons on your collar…
The color of your hair…
I think I see you everywhere”

It’s a far cry sonically from the sumptuous textures that The Blue Nile were known for, but the essence of that band’s songs have been rendered down and concentrated here into emotive haikus that are as light as a feather, yet devastate with their touch. Buchanan sings as thought he is trying not to wake up the sleeper in the room next door at 3:30 in the morning. His voice rarely rises above a murmur, but it doesn’t need to. The emotional core of his songs are focused like a laser on getting the feeling across with the least amount of “set dressing” and extraneous frippery.

Unlike the early Blue Nile albums, the 14 songs here are mostly two to three minutes in length. The lengthy instrumental buildups of a song like “A Walk Across The Rooftops” are nonexistent here. Any extraneous fat has been ruthlessly excised from the material and I for one, don’t miss it. Buchanan is no longer exploring mood sonically, with a reliance on textures. He works here with almost gossamer piano and scant synth textures that sound as if they are drifting in on some faraway breeze. And the work has a heart-rending impact that is inversely proportional to its decibel level.

I’ve always linked Sinatra with Buchanan in my mind but in reality, he’s more like an inverted mirror image of him. Whereas Sinatra was 80% bravado and 20% vulnerability [and his art resided with his vulnerability], Buchanan is more like 90% vulnerability, and the 10% of bravado he uses on occasion [but not here] is used for ironic effect. His emotions were always laid bare in that photos of the youthful Buchanan show a face with the creases of middle age, decades in advance of the actual event. At 56, he’s now grown into the face he’s always had. And he’s pared away as much as he can in order to focus on exactly what drives his art; the examination of bittersweet heartbreak and all it implies for the human condition.

After the indigestible Ultravox album that I had to listen to for over a week [the things I do for my readers], hearing this is like oxygen to a drowning man! I simply can’t get these songs out of my head. Particularly the unfogettable title cut. Immediately upon hearing it, its achingly plaintive vibe has stuck with me like glue and won’t let go. While the sound here is as minimal as one can get, there are a few exceptions.

“Buy A Motor Car” has tantalizing echoes of the string and horn components of a song like “A Walk Across The Rooftops” and upon hearing it, my mind was adding the filigree that I associated with their earlier opus with ease. The material is stripped down, yet has the structural integrity to support more advanced levels of ornamentation that Buchanan was not interested in pursuing at this time. He has said that much of this music was a response to the recent loss of a friend that spurred him on. Elsewhere, the surprising instrumental “Fin De Siécle” in spite of having no vocals, is clearly the densest arrangement of music on offer here. It acts like a brief palate cleanser before the climactic “After Dark;” which at 3:56 is the magnum opus of this album.

The bonus album in the limited edition functions in the way that B-sides once did on singles. Back when there were singles. It features eight alternate versions of songs from the main album as well as two songs that didn’t quite fit Buchanan’s vision. The first of these is “Have You Ever Been Lonely” and I could see this as also being used as the final cut on “Mid Air” in place of “After Dark,” but there was only room for one track that’s so laid bare, so it ends up here.

Most of these cuts are instrumental versions that seems to be alternate takes, though I’ve not done serious A/B comparisons yet. “Lost” seems to be a new song, but in fact it’s an instrumental version of “I Remember You.” “Half The World” is an alternate vocal version distinguished by the sort of clinking metallic percussion that was a hallmark of the first Blue Nile album. “Mid Air” is another vocal take that still devastates me when Buchanan sings:

“The girl I want to marry…
Up on the high trapeze…
The day she fell and hurt her knees”

The way his voice trails off to almost nothing at the closure of the third line is an emotional gut punch I’m still not immune to after a dozen listenings.

Finally, the last song, “God Is Laughing” almost sounds like something that might have come off of “Peace At Last.” While the sound and tone of that album didn’t work for me, I like this song much better as Buchanan whips out his trusty acoustic guitar and harmonica rack. This is by far the most elaborate arrangement to be found in the whole package. The tone here is lighter than on any of these tracks, but don’t let that fool you. It still sports lyrics like:

“Please forgive me,
For the sinning I have done
Please forgive me,
For the sinning yet to come
I want to love you,
But I come undone”

Buchanan has made an album that sounds like it took very little effort, but the simplicity of this record is misleading. He’s invested his life in these songs and on this, his fifth album in nearly 30 years, he’s managed to trim away any embellishment that distracts from his message as only a master can. He was rewarded with this album reaching 14 in its debut week on the UK album charts, so thankfully, there are still ears attuned to his unique gifts in these, the end times. The limited edition box sold out in pre-release, so that’s great news since the “label” that released this album was “Newsroom Records.” Namely, Buchanan himself, with some solid help from Essential Music and Marketing. For a fascinating case study of how they planned the marketing campaign for this wonderful album, read this illuminating story here. We’re fortunate to have artistry and marketing in such a harmonious relationship since that’s hardly par for course. Thus far, this is my album of 2012.

– 30 –