Blue Nile’s Mood-Filled Sounds Run Deep

The Scottish trio the Blue Nile doesn’t get out much. On Monday, as the band delivered a rare set at the Roxy in support of its third album, “Peace at Last,” no one forgot that this grown-ups’ cult band has only played here once, way back in 1990. And Monday’s show was only the 35th live performance in its 17-year history.

It was to an excited crowd that singer Paul Buchanan admitted being horribly nervous. “My therapist abandoned me,” he lamented. “Didn’t come.” But Buchanan’s most intimate confessions were saved for the songs. Within a moody cathedral of sounds, he explored the tension between finding love and a gothic fear of losing it. The songs are deeply personal, infused with a respect for nature that makes hills and streams full-fledged characters--and even conspirators.

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Audience members shouted requests for songs, including an unlikely one for “Johnny B. Goode.” Displaying the timing of someone with show biz in his blood, Buchanan replied, “Which we do as a ballad.”

The Blue Nile played its emotive music with meticulous precision, as Buchanan’s voice, Robert Bell’s bass and Paul Joseph Moore’s keyboards (boosted by three guest musicians) riffed on one another in a jazzy invocation. At times it was too meticulous: With every airtight lick, you almost wished for a mistake. But the performance felt like a privileged peek at a recording session with a band whose sophisticated yet uncommercial work guarantees it a small clutch of die-hard fans, whether it braves a tour bus or not.