Oh, dear Lord. Someone please tell me this is a joke. Is this really what has become of Mark Knopfler?
Apparently he's got an acute case of Claptonitis. The man is becoming a weenie. Now, I can enjoy slowly crafted sonic landscapes and introspective musical meandering just as much as the next guy, but is there anyone who didn't at least somewhat mourn the demise of a legendary rock career when "Pilgrim" was released? Knopfler seems to be headed down the same path.
He first built a name for himself in the 1970s and 1980s as the frontman of Dire Straits. He was always the primary force -- in fact, he was the only force in the group, period. The lineup changed several times over the years as he surrounded himself with a variety of different hired guns and then slapped the Dire Straits (tm) label on projects for the recognition factor. Several years ago, he decided to retire the Dire Straits name, but one would expect that his solo work would continue in the same vein.
His Dire Straits work was characterized by well-placed melodic intricacy, always suggesting a musical sort of Tourette's syndrome but seeming sophisticated at the same time. Dizzying, circular melodies populate gems such as "Down to the Waterline" and "Lady Writer." I'll freely admit to having missed his two preceding solo albums, but the ill-fated single "What It Is" reassured me that, despite having taken off on his own, Knopfler was still making music that I would have liked.
Not so anymore. Unfortunately, his new album, "The Ragpicker's Dream," doesn't contain any of what worked before. Even worse is the complete lack of anything that can even begin to make up for the album's lack of spunk. The closest approximations we're given are a couple of bouncy blues numbers. That's all. "Bouncy." Ugh. It makes me grimace just thinking about it.
It's not that Knopfler should just get a bit crazier when he plays. Slower Dire Straits songs like "Brothers in Arms" and "Ride Across the River" were great despite being reserved -- they just ended up more on the "sophisticated" side of the spectrum.
The problem with the "Ragpicker's" tunes is that they are overwhelmingly underwhelming -- almost all are middle-of-the-road in tempo, thus forfeiting the benefits of both high-speed aggression and slower poignancy.
Vocally, Knopfler has always resembled Bob Dylan. The difference is that Dylan acknowledges his lyrical focus and usually just says whatever he needs to, regardless of whether or not the measures overflow. I get the feeling that Knopfler was trying to make a much more balanced record, and so he doesn't take as many reckless liberties with the lyrics as Dylan might have. He also seems to have deliberately avoided making use of the flying fingers that distinguished him in the first place. As a result, Knopfler doesn't particularly excel, on neither the mic nor the guitar.
All right, enough of my whining. Here's the play-by-play: "Hill Farmer's Blues" is actually pretty good. Although it's totally predictable, "Marbletown" is fun enough to stand out from the scores of plain vanilla blues songs out there, and the chorus of "Why Aye Man" pretty much nails the amusingly stupid tone which I think it was going for. Unfortunately, the rest of the songs are mediocre.
I might have been somewhat better prepared for "Ragpicker's" if it had been marketed under the Tom Petty brand name, but as a Knopfler (tm) product, it was just too much of a shock. Hopefully, having read this warning, you'll end up liking this record better than I did. If you go into "Ragpicker's" expecting it to be a sparse and simple affair, you might be able to appreciate it for what it is. If you expect it to be "What It Is," you're out of luck.
Between his soundtracks, solo albums and other projects, Knopfler has somehow amassed a reputation for being a bit of a chameleon, able to cover many different stylistic bases depending on the context. I, for one, am hoping that this ragpicking junk is just a temporary phase. The shorter it is, the better ... because "Sultans of Adult Contemporary" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
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