This Glasgow trio caused a flurry in the U.K. five years ago with a seductively well-crafted first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops. The Blue Nile's second album, Hats, is stronger still. Songwriter and vocalist Paul Buchanan has brought a more refined melodic sense to the compositions, and the results are rewarding. Songs such as "The Downtown Lights" and "Saturday Night" have a sparse, soulful...

A bizarre footnote in new wave history, Scotland's Blue Nile gained notoriety in the mid-'80s by proffering epic song lengths, angular rhythms and studio trickery that owed as much to experimental composer Philip Glass or the Brit artrockers Soft Machine as it did to Talking Heads. Peace at Last, the Blue Nile's first album in seven years, is predictably overwrought. Updating for the unplugged...

The Blue Nile is not a smart band – in the sense of being clever, shrewd, stylish or, most important, commercially savvy. The Blue Nile is intelligent, which is different. Their debut, A Walk across the Rooftops, is a sneaky album. The music slips between the cracks, an effortless flow of acoustic and electronic sounds with nary a hook in the curiously murky mix. Without the benefit of either...