A Walk Across the Rooftops
It’s a few days after the millennial mini-holiday that is the release of Spotify Wrapped, and I’m still reeling from the way the algorithm has once again attacked and betrayed me. I will NOT be sharing mine.
Okay, I’ll share mine.
I won’t go into the detailed explanation of this mess. I can’t do that to myself, or to your reading capacity. Not on day one.
I only die by this algorithm because I also live by it. One of the few habits I actually maintain is waking up on Monday and hitting play on my Discover Weekly playlist, a Spotify-generated weekly dump of songs recommended to me by a robot. Additionally, every Friday, when all of the week’s new releases are dumped, I scroll through the list, clicking on a couple songs from anything that I recognize or otherwise captures my attention. The more you put into variety of listening, the more the robots have to work with, and the more you get recommended in return.
Sometime last week, listening to some random playlist on shuffle, a song was played that immediately grabbed me, and it hasn’t let me go for days.
In the early 80’s, a couple of friends in Glasgow, who weren’t particularly spectacular musicians, started making music. They stumbled into being discovered, and launched their recording career with A Walk Across the Rooftops, a seven track record that was the first release for a brand new record label company. It didn’t garner a ton of interest, but it did receive some glowing reviews. Slowly, methodically, the friends built a strong reputation, releasing three more records and working with some infamous pop stars on other projects along the way. They called their band THE BLUE NILE.
What I find so alluring and so-far enduring about this record, and their sound, is how simple and recognizable it is: the drum machine, the funk-pop bass lines, the 80’s synths, the David Byrne-ness of the vocals. But then you feel that the knobs are turned slightly, the stories have different details, the production has a couple different layers, and the vocals are pulling at you with an unexpected earnestness.
It’s just a couple guys writing music about being young, in love, trying to make it on their own, questioning everything, caring only about one person, asking them for everything. Their stories and experiences and emotions feel so pedestrian, their technical talents uninspiring Yet something in the alchemy of being new, being free to create, and being these two guys, it all created something uncommon from the common. Shifting between dark and brooding, bright and moving; knowing, searching; tense, loose; just like a week in the life of any of us back then.
It’s something I know would have dug a deep hole into me ten or twelve years ago, a kid stumbling through young adulthood. I can hear my dad’s guitar and effects, and his friend Dan’s voice crooning through “Heatwave”, probably my favorite track on the record. The track, and the whole record, meet me where I am today, but they also create a window that I can see my younger self through, and that’s a relationship that I don’t have a lot of ammunition for, yet.
And, sometimes most importantly, this is music I can play a little too loud with the lights off and with one more drink than I need to be having. I can hit play on track one, and let the driving production of half the songs lift me to my feet, and let the drowning production of the other half sink me into the couch. I can go through the ringer with these songs. And, sometimes, that is my favorite place to be.
And this was just their debut.
I hope you give The Blue Nile a listen. If you want some great 2022 music recommendations, one of my favorite writers/creators/music-listeners has just released his annual “favorite tracks of the year” playlist, which he painstakingly places in a specific order (obviously a child of the cassette mistape days). You can find his playlist HERE.
I’m ramping up some kind of “I liked these records from this year” list, as well as one for new movies, and one for “favorite books I read that mostly did not come out this year”. I would love to hear what y’all have loved this year. Get at me.
TTFN
B