It is the way of things that, several weeks after Bill Oddie concluded his Springwatch, one of the most retiring creatures in the British Isles is emerging, briefly and blinking timidly, from hibernation.

The Blue Nile are the very definition of a lesser-spotted. They have released only four albums since they formed in 1981, each one an exquisitely terse essay in widescreen balladry.

This represents an average of about a song a year. There are oak trees that have a more pressing attitude.

The band’s run of three shows at the Royal Concert Hall next week, before releasing a new album — said to be in preparation for next year — represents the kind of frenzied, reckless burst of hyperactivity that may culminate in some band members requiring a restorative sojourn in a darkened room with a long Russian novel.

However, fans tolerate the group’s mysterious ways with the faith that attaches to every true cult. Their work is always worth the wait, even if the wait stretches to lengths that often have us wondering whether they are still alive.

A Walk Across the Rooftops, their 1984 debut album, remains a peerless evocation of the romance inherent in rainy midnight city streets, an angular Hopper study of twilit melancholy.

The later albums Hats and Peace at Last added acoustic hues to their electronic palette and yielded songs that were covered by Annie Lennox and Rod Stewart. The most recent, High, took them deeper into the American dreams of the songwriter and vocalist, Paul Buchanan.

A consistent seam runs through all their recordings, of stately regard for life’s tiny meaningful moments, allied to a lush soundtrack of triumphant sadness. The obsessive craft and elusive import of the group’s work allows it to be depthless and endlessly replayable for years on end, which is just as well in the circumstances.

Several new pieces might even appear during these shows and no doubt they will be perfectly formed, minutely worked companion pieces to such classics as Tinseltown in the Rain, the anthem that seemed to hint that crying for love feels all the sweeter if it occurs in Glasgow, and The Downtown Lights, a song in which the lovelorn are for ever driving over the Kingston Bridge in a downpour.

As for their Glasgow shows, as the pop-pickers say, be there or be square. The next chance may not arrive for some time.