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It’s not Dire Straits, but Mark Knopfler’s new album is a testament to his musical genius.
Three decades after the British rock band broke up, Mark Knopfler presents the closest thing to it — even without most of his old partners. Although One Deep River doesn’t offer any new classics to rival the highlights of Dire Straits, quite a few of the 12 songs that grace this solo album add up to a slow, laid-back rock album.
The musical taste of most of us does not change over the years, and from the moment it tightens in the middle-end of the third decade of our lives, it sets the limits of our size as listeners. Quite a few albums and artists crowned as gospel for a few moments a decade or two ago are revealed on later listening to be less relevant to who we are today, and they are pushed to the corner of the private record label in favor of our soundtrack schedule. Nostalgia does not bloom only because of cultural laziness or because our hard disk is full, But because at a certain point in life, the understanding comes that the first request from any album — new or old — is that it gives us a feeling that we have returned home.
Mark Knopfler has been my home — or at least one of my musical homes — for over three and a half decades. I joined the journey of the Dire Straits towards its end, just before On Every Street, the last album they released in 1991. I…
