After a crazy day at work I am
about to be rewarded with the start of the NFL season! Yeehaw – football, the greatest sport ever
invented. As thoughtful as a championship
chess match, but where each move ends in a violent collision.
Before I do though, I’m taking
advantage of my PVR to delay the game an hour and write this review.
Disc 547 is…. On Every Street
Artist: Dire
Straits
Year of Release: 1991
What’s up with the Cover? It looks like the eighties puked on a nineties
graphics program. This is a pair of
shoes on a desk and a guitar in the background, done a second time as an inset
because a) you could have missed it the first time and b) that is the kind of
lame effect nineties graphics programs are capable of.
How I Came To Know It: As an avowed Dire Straits fan, this was just me
drilling through their collection.
How It Stacks Up: We have six studio albums by Dire Straits, which I
believe is all of them. Something had to
be last, and regrettably “On Every Street” is it.
Rating: 2 stars
No matter how great the band, it is rare that their
last album is their best. Most rock acts
die with a whimper. “On Every Street” is
Dire Straits’ death knell, and it is by far their weakest effort, but it does
show the glimpses of what would become an amazing solo career for Mark Knopfler
that continues to this day. As
average as “On Every Street” is, it still has some bright spots; you just can’t
keep a great band like Dire Straits down.
The first and most famous song on the album is “Calling Elvis” is sadly not one of the
album’s best. It is a gimmick song,
determined to fill itself with as many strained Elvis references as it
can. It is supposed to be a moody blues
rock piece but it just sounds like the band is desperate for a runaway pop hit
(it was more of a walkaway pop single).
“Calling Elvis”
(and many other songs on the album) suffer from long boring fadeouts. In previous albums, this part of the song
would be filled with some classic Knopfler guitar solos, but on “On Every
Street” it just feels like they don’t know how to end the songs and so they
settle for repeating the riff as they turn the volume down to zero.
Also, there is far too much saxophone and piano
action on parts of the song where on earlier albums Knopfler would play some guitar
licks. Is it apparent yet that this album
doesn’t have enough of Knopfler’s guitar?
When you have the world’s greatest rock guitarist, let him wail!
All this saxophone and piano too often morphs into what I would call “gumshoe blues.” These are songs that sound like
they’d be at home as background music for a TV show like “Moonlighting” or in
that Kathleen Turner flop, “V.I. Warshawski” (also released in 1991). “Fade
to Black” and “You and Your Friend”
are the two worst offenders for this effect, but others are guilty to lesser
degrees.
The title track, “On Every Street” starts off with a bit of this eighties gumshoe sound, but
it is such a good song it recovers itself into respectability, if not actual
excellence.
In many ways this album reminded me of “Love Over Gold” with its obvious love of detective imagery, but without that album’s
level of songwriting.
When I first listened to this album, the songs that
appealed to me were the driving rock of “Heavy
Fuel” and the laid-back humour of “My
Parties” but after repeat listens both of these started to have the same
novelty feel of “Calling Elvis.”
“The Bug”
is a passable song, but in a strange twist of fate I learned the Mary Chapin
Carpenter version first and found on comparison, I liked it better. Sorry, Mark!
Despite all this criticism, there is some good
stuff. Even though the songs are simple,
the musicianship is excellent, and good playing will elevate any song. Also, there are legitimately good songs.
The two best hint at the direction Knopfler’s solo
album is going to go, starting with “Iron
Hand.” “Iron Hand” is a Coles
Notes version of the epic “Brothers in
Arms” off of their earlier album of the same name. “Iron
Hand” is Knopfler exploring his passion in military history, and the lessons
it teaches us.
I don’t know what historical event “Iron Hand” is referencing (we're told early on that the soldiers
wear blue, but that doesn’t help much) but the lyrics are evocative:
“Oh the iron will and the iron
hand
In England’s green and pleasant
land
No music for the shameful scene
That night they said it had even
shocked the queen”
Followed by the reminder that we’re no better as a
species now:
“Well alas we’ve seen it all
before
Knights in armour, days of yore
The same old fears, and the same
old crimes
We haven’t changed since ancient
times.”
Knopfler sings it in a wistful and haunting tone,
and lets his guitar punctuate here and there to add emotional resonance without
overpowering the basic tune.
Also memorable is “How Long,” a Blue Rodeo-esque track (who have a totally different
song also called “How Long”). Knopfler’s shows his burgeoning love for
western music and guitar styles that continue to enrich his playing today. In “How
Long” these western constructions are forged into a song where a man gently
chides the woman of his desire to give him a little attention before he loses
interest and moves on. The description sounds
a bit petulant but the tune makes it emotionally light and even a little
playful.
Hearing both “Iron
Hand” and “How Long” put a smile
on my face after other tracks had left me with a grimace. Even if they were few and far between,
hearing these songs provides the bridge to classic Knopfler solo efforts like “Golden Heart” and “Sailing to Philadelphia” and shows that a band can still
spawn something beautiful, even in its last moments.
Best tracks: On Every Street, Iron Hand, How Long
No comments:
Post a Comment