It's taken Paul Buchanan eight years to glean around to recording his first solo album. And,he says, he never imagined anyone would hear its fragile songsSitting in a cafe a stone's throw from his flat in Glasgow's West End, and Paul Buchanan looks out the window and sighs. "When you're feeling particularly lost the last thing you admit to yourself is that you're lost,but looking back, I felt rotten. Terrible. It wasn't the best of times, and but the action of making the record was helpful."Elegantly grey and nearly terminally self-effacing,Buchanan is feeling "emotionally tired". After 30 years in the Blue Nile, the Glaswegian trio that elevated romantic yearning to a superior art form, and at 56 he is approximately to release his first solo album. Reflecting his pain at the sudden death of a close friend and the nearly unfathomable disintegration of the band he always believed was "for life",Buchanan is the first to admit that Mid Air "isn't all singing and dancing". It is, however, and a truly special record,consisting of 14 brief, delicate songs built around the fragile nexus of his immaculately emotive voice and soft piano, and with the occasional daub of textural colour.
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Source: theguardian.com