Before I get on with the music, a
big congratulations to my friends Chris and Allison, who got engaged last
night. Two great people who have found each other in this crazy world.
Disc 740 is….Shangri-La
Artist: Mark
Knopfler
Year of Release: 2004
What’s up with the Cover? It is a one armed bandit, presumably to go
along with Vegas-themed songs of boxing, strip clubs and assorted low lifes.
I’ve never understood the allure of Vegas, or gambling in general. I don’t get
this cover either.
How I Came To Know It: I was already an avowed fan of
Knopfler’s solo work by the time “Shangri-La” came out, so I just bought it
automatically when I saw it.
How It Stacks Up: Over the years of writing this blog I’ve always
struggled with whether to include Mark Knopfler’s many joint projects. Let’s
not. With my recent purchase of Knopfler’s 2015 album “Tracker” I now have
eight Mark Knopfler solo albums. “Shangri-La” is third best.
Ratings: 3 stars
Listening to “Shangri-La” and its laid back
blues-folk rhythms it is hard to believe that twenty years earlier Mark
Knopfler was rocking out calling for his MTV and doing the walk of life.
There is still a groove to Knopfler’s playing that
is grounded in rock n’ roll and the blues, but everything seems more chilled
out. Knopfler is still pumping out amazing guitar licks, but now they are in no
hurry to get where they’re going. His playing is more thick and expansive than
ever on “Shangri-La” whether it is the rock-edged “Boom, Like That,” the blues groove on “Song for Sonny Liston” or a California beach strum on the title
track. Knopfler can play any guitar style with equal genius and on “Shangri-La”
he just takes his time doing so.
Vocally, Knopfler will never win a singing
competition, but he knows how to write songs that suit his strengths. When he
does climb up for high notes he does it with a practiced ease, knowing he’s
going to get there, even if he isn’t likely able to go any higher.
Knopfler often writes about ordinary folks doing
ordinary things, and there is an element of that on “Shangri-La” but the album
focuses more on the charlatans and hucksters of society.
“Boom, Like
That” tells the tale of Ray Kroc, founder of Macdonald’s restaurant, and it
doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Here is a guy who took some other person’s
idea, franchised it and choked out competition at every turn. The song is
cleverly told from Kroc’s perspective and you can get the sense of a man who
loves to make money, and no shame in how he does it.
Other songs focus on more generic, but equally
questionable businessmen. “Sucker Row”
is a song about a club owner (I think a strip club) making sure his staff knows
to keep pushing the beer on customers and “Stand
Up Guy” is about the person who works alongside a snake oil salesman to
prove the product works. He’s the guy who ‘volunteers’ from the crowd to try it
out and then declares it a miracle.
Knopfler has a great flair for turning character
dialogue into lyrics that reveal their character better than any description.
Consider this callous outlook from the pub owner in “Sucker Row”:
“Annie’s arriving at a dangerous
age
Don’t you go getting ill
Get another woman up in the cage
Who ain’t over the hill,
Honey you know the drill.”
On “Song for
Sonny Liston” Knopfler introduces us to a man who is both hoodlum and
victim. Before I heard this song I knew nothing about Sonny Liston except that
he was a boxer. Now I know his hard-scrabble background and his role of villain
to the fans. Again, Knopfler summons up the sights and sounds of the times:
“The writer’s didn’t like him,
the fight game jocks
With his lowlife backers and his
hands like rocks
They didn’t want to have a bogey
man
They didn’t like him and he didn’t
like them.”
The song is set to a menacing guitar riff that made
you feel like Liston is glowering outside your door, ready to swing those rocks
at whoever he was paid to hit, and maybe a few others for free.
There are other times on the album that have
questionable lyrics. “Whoop de Doo”
is a pretty break up song, but making the chorus “whoop de doo” sounds silly. It feels like Knopfler fell in love
with the idea of making a song with that expression in it, and refused to let
it go.
On both “5:15
a.m.” and “Don’t Crash the Ambulance”
I’m not fully sure of what the songs are about. “5:15 a.m.” seems to involve a mining community, some local thugs, and
a body in a Jaguar under a bridge but it jumps through time so much I lose the
narrative every time I listen to it.
“Don’t Crash the Ambulance” feels like it might be about
serial killers, politicians, or even spies or maybe all three. If Knopfler is
trying to connect them all thematically, the threads of the story never quite
meet up, lost in the image of the ambulance that doesn’t seem to match up well
to any of them.
On balance, this is a good record despite losing its
way in a couple of places. Knopfler sings well and his guitar playing is a
wonder that pulls even the weakest of songs into respectability. Three stars.
1 comment:
Glad that you and the Lovely Sheila(tm) were able to share that with us.
For someone who remains such a fan of Dire Straits, I have never actually acquired any of Mark Knopfler's solo albumbs. I shall need to rectify that some day.
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