If, like me, you were an angsty teen or an angsty twenty-something during the 1980’s you may have been an avid fan of The Blue Nile. Their first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops, originally commissioned by a small audio electronics store to show off the dynamic range of their speakers, was critically acclaimed, and an audio magical wonderland.
About seven years later – as was their typical album release cadence – their second album, Hats, was released with Downtown Lights being a standout track that would later be covered by the phenomenal Annie Lennox.
This is not that cover.
Instead this is a brilliant reinterpretation of this work by Lucia & The Best Boys. Lucia Fairfull gives an amazing performance that’s somehow an amalgam of The Blue Nile’s own Paul Buchanan and Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch. Describing Fairfull’s vocals in this way, though, likely does an injustice to a such a unique and eloquent performance. Lucia makes it her own. Each band member, too, is adding their own unique twist, for example Christopher Ballantyne with a super-clean, almost Joy Division-like bass line. Bonus points for the Suzuki Omnichord!
Unlike many well-intentioned cover efforts of this track, I think that Lucia and the Best Boys really get it with their performance. They give this magnificent track its due space to expand the listener’s perception, much like the original, and give it time to tell the story in its own time.