Album: Paul Buchanan, Mid Air (Newsroom)

There are few surprises for Blue Nile fans on this first solo album from singer Paul Buchanan, save perhaps for the general mood of stability: even the emotional turbulence sketched in “Wedding Day” is recollected in tranquillity.

It's an unashamedly middle-aged affair, from the quietly moving affirmation of devotion in “Two Children” to the comforting reverie of “I Remember You”. The line in “My True Country” about going “far above the chimney tops” surely refers as much to Marc Chagall's floating lovers as to Blue Nile's debut A Walk Across The Rooftops. The songs are like fragments of time frozen in old photographs, replete with tiny epiphanies amidst mundanity.

Download: Half the World; Wedding Party; My True Country