Each release from ex-Dire Straits mastermind Mark Knopfler secures
his rep as a classic songwriter—at the expense of his ranking as
a guitarist.
Knopfler’s sixth solo effort, Get Lucky, is his best in terms
of his material, yet it’s his weakest fret-board effort. It’s a
tradeoff that many will accept given the cinematic language in the song
“So Far From the Clyde,” which details the ship-breaking of a vessel
forged in Glasgow, Scotland (along the River Clyde): “They swarm on her
carcass / with torches and axes / Like a whale on the bloody
shoreline.”
Other great songs about Knopfler’s hardscrabble youth include
“Border Reiver,” a sketch of the work of a lorry driver, and “Before
Gas and TV,” which eulogizes the way people entertained themselves,
with a simple guitar and a fireplace, prior to 20th-century comforts
that mean we no longer have to learn how to sing music.
It’s simplistic to say Get Lucky is Knopfler’s working-class
paean, but it’s not inaccurate. For him, the past was better; folks
cared for what they built with their hands, whether it was an archtop
guitar (“Monteleone”) or a Ford Cobra (“The Car Was the One”). This
idea is hard to accept in our Disposable Age, but Knopfler puts it all
to pleasing music that’s rich in instrumentation (flutes, whistles,
strings).
As the album art (photos of Las Vegas neon) suggests, life is
chance; only workmanship gives us control.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2009.
