When I’m done this review I’m
going to go finish watching the Hollow Crown production of Shakespeare’s “Richard
II.” The series was loaned to me by my friend Kate, and although I’m only an
hour in I already know I owe here a favour.
But first, let’s carry on with the
CD Odyssey – since that’s why I’m here and since you are reading this, I’ll
assume the same for you.
Disc 748 is….Privateering
Artist: Mark
Knopfler
Year of Release: 2012
What’s up with the Cover? Welcome to the 21st century where this is now a thing. By this, I mean album covers with little or
no connection to the artist or the album itself. I blame Belle and Sebastian
for starting this trend. Here Mark Knopfler has decided to make an entry into
the Pointless Cover Olympics with what I’ve titled “Old Van, Old Dog, Pile of Tires.” This is the best one could hope
for from a picture with a description like that, but that is still damning it
with faint praise.
How I Came To Know It: I am an avowed Mark Knopfler fan
– I bought this unheard when it came out, because Mark has earned that trust
from me over the years.
How It Stacks Up: I have eight Mark Knopfler
albums. Of those eight, “Privateering” is going in at third, displacing “Shangri-La”
which I just reviewed at Disc 740. Oops.
Ratings: 3 stars and worth your time, but
it’s complicated – more on that later.
“Privateering” is a combination of Mark Knopfler at
his absolute best, and Mark Knopfler who doesn’t know when to say when.
The album starts out strong with “Redbud Tree,” a song where he displays
his ability to paint a picture with music and lyrics. The song is about someone
(something?) hiding in the branches of a redbud tree and you can listen to this
song ten times (I have) and still not know the circumstances of hunter and
hunted. It doesn’t matter – the scene is so evocative that you feel a permanent
connection of gratitude to a tree that hid someone (something?) from certain
death. It’s the relationship between the succored and the tree – the circumstances
are secondary.
“Redbud Tree”
also continues Knopfler’s penchant for starting an album with a song that shows
off his guitar genius. More understated now than in his days of rock and roll,
but still as beautiful as ever.
For the most part, the whole of the first half of “Privateering”
is full of equal brilliance. “Haul Away”
is about losing someone at sea (for real, or maybe just metaphorically). It is also
one of the great sea shanties I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of them. If
you’ve ever held the railing of a ship in a gentle swell and leaned out over
the water, feeling helplessly and beautifully lost, then this is a song for
you.
Later Knopfler would drop another modern classic of
the sea with the title track. Where “Haul
Away” is a song of mourning, “Privateering”
is full of black-sailed adventure. Knopfler turns his keen historical eye on
the golden age of piracy. Best lines out of many great ones:
“Come with me to Barbary
We’ll ply there up and down
Not quite exactly
In the service of the Crown
To lay with pretty women
To drink Madeira wine
To hear the rollers thunder
On a shore that isn’t mine.”
Phew! I swear if there are past lives, I was a
sailor in more than one of them.
Before the first ten songs are over on this record,
Knopfler has not only taken us out to sea, he’s broken our hearts in a more
conventional manner with “Go, Love”
and then made us fall in love all over again with “Seattle.” Along the way he’s plucked some upbeat stuff to keep our
heart rate up. 18 years after his first solo album, it is an album as good as
any.
But then, he doesn’t stop. Instead, he decides to
make this into a double album, and adds another ten songs. The slower songs are
mostly pale facsimiles of those on the first disc. The faster ones have that stale
and dated smell about them that music people without rhythm like to dance to because
it’s “easy”. You know the stuff – that empty mid-tempo zombie-swing that sits
somewhere between roots and blues and can be found in every small town pub on a
Wednesday night. Six customers are in the place; two of them are shuffling back
and forth on the dance floor and you and your buddy from high school make up
half of the rest.
There are some good tracks on the second disc,
notably a lovely historical piece called “Dream
of the Drowned Submariner” (yes, the sea again) which is “Disc One” worthy.
“Today is OK” is a lowlife character
study, about a brawler and a drinker that (unless I’m mishearing the lyrics)
goes out to do both and then comes home feeling frisky; also strong enough for
Disc One.
In fact, if I had been producing this album, I would
have just put these two on the first disc and have done with it. Sadly, like an
overlong Dire Straits solo at a live show, Mark decides he must have it all and
instead ends up having too much.
So what I’m going to do is make my own version of
this CD as described above and play that one around the house. I can’t do that
under the rules of the Odyssey, but I sure as hell can in my spare time.
Best
tracks: Redbud
Tree, Haul Away, Privateering, Miss You Blues, Go Love, Seattle, Dream of the
Drowned Submariner, Today is OK
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