Paul Buchanan: 'Mid Air' New 'Official' Videos & Reviews: Guardian/Border/Mojo

There's a great interview by Graeme Thomson of The Guardian that you can read in full here. In it PB admits that 'Mid Air' "isn't all singing and dancing" and talks revealingly about fellow ex bandmates Robert Bell and PJ Moore; "a group of real friends, truly democratic". 
They wanted their songs "to be better versions of us – of everything. We wanted to make pictures, so we tried to remove ourselves from the fabric of it, to get out of the way of the music." 
After the release of 'High' he noted that "some of the unfettered joy had gone. Some kind of magic had slipped away from us, and some of the hope that we started out with. " 
So was there a future for The Blue Nile?  
"It's not cut and dried. The right thing to do as people would be to get together again – even if we then say goodbye. That's my vague hope. It probably won't happen, but I know that contributing to that unit was me at  my best."
Of Mid Air he confesses " "At no point did I think I was making a record. It never occurred to me that anybody else would listen to it. Looking back, that was a great thing. That unselfconscious quality becomes more elusive as you go on making music, so it's nice to be brought back to that very simple expectation. It was almost like starting out again. I wasn't deliberately making a record of fulfilling a contract. There's a joy and innocence in that.... You work and work and work and have the life that you have, and once in a while, sometimes once in a decade, you see a few things you've got and think, yes, that's authentic. You try to stay true to that little moment whatever the costs.""


Here at the bottom of the page are two 'official videos for 'Mid Air' made by Bernard Rudden. 
If you go to Paul's official site here you can vote for the one you prefer.
Meanwhile, reading the Mojo interviewette (see what I did there?) at the bottom of the post and looking at his photo above, it seems that Paul's getting all emotional at the love fest:


“I might not be John Lennon or Mahler but that's okay; I have a modest life and I know the world won't care if I give up tomorrow. But once in a while someone will stop me in the street and say to me, “My wife and I got married to your song”- it’s tiny moments like that that resonate with me”.


Further afield, Sweden's 'Border' magazine have given 'Mid Air' a 10 out of 10 rating.

Thanks to Morten Hald for this translation…

“Painstakingly Beautiful. One should think it impossible to surpass the low key Glasgow-band The Blue Nile in making beautiful, sad pop music. But by releasing his first solo album in his 30 year career, the bands frontman Paul Buchanan manages to do just that and by applying much simpler measures. A lone voice, piano, the odd trumpet and strings. In such setting small things such as an extended accord or vocal intonations can make a big difference. Such small gestures are something Buchanan masters to its fullest. Simple, essential, everyday like. Painfully beautiful at times as only such things can be. Mid Air leaves no eye dry and you have to be made of diamond or granite to remain untouched and not cry. It is a set of short songs which the artist is even reluctant to call an album, rather he dubbed it a ‘recordette’. Any which way it is irresistible.”