28 Jun, 2012 The Wonder Of Both Paul’s
I bought Paul Buchanan’s newly released album today, it is called Mid Air and I am delighted as always to have new music from a genuinely great music artist.
Born and bred in Glasgow, as I am, I somehow feel I know Paul really well. I guess as fans, we all do. But I don’t really, that notion is more to do with the conversationalist character of the wonderful music that he repeatedly made with the group Blue Nile. Thankfully that confidential tone is again evident within his now most welcomed solo work. He really has the gift of making it seem that he is speaking to the listener one on one. He is in your world, seemingly. And you are somehow together with him, in his. That it is a heart-warming place to be is in no doubt. Of course if you already know the music then you will naturally have your own impressions. And if you do not, as well as informing, I envy you the possibility to discover for the first time some of the most sublime music that you might hear. Particularly should you venture through the catalogue that has involved Paul both with and without Blue Nile.
Another Paul entirely, but Paul Statham is also one who belongs to the “dream school”. The fact I am partly involved with his Dark Flowers project is testimony to how much I adored listening to the early music sketches that he sent me, beginning some two years ago. The images that came to me as I listened repeatedly to Paul’s soothing and ghostlike “electro desert” songs, became the backbone for so many of the lyrics that eventually poured forth. Almost movielike, each track seemed loaded with pictures that suggested short scenarios that occurred spontaneously in the widest open places. American Gothic – sprung to mind, or at least it did to mine. You can see and hear what you make of it.
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Jim Kerr