Mark Knopfler: One “Deep” Artist

When one considers the fact that Dire Straits only made 6 studio albums  (between 1977 and their break up in 1995), it’s astonishing that Mark Knopfler just released his 10^th solo album. As his new song (“Two Pairs of Hands”) says- “Holy moly, where did the time go?”

His latest album, One Deep River follows the successful formula of its previous efforts: a rich voice singing deep stories, and wonderfully crafted guitar riffs over a bed of magic created by his hand-picked backing band. Mark Knopfler is like the baritone Roy Orbison.

This is a quiet album; there’s not a single all-out rocker among the 12 tracks.  Although this collection did not make me miss those hard strains of the past (“Solid Rock,” “Heavy Fuel”), they broke little new musical ground. While this was a disappointment as Knopfler continues to repeat the sounds and textures of his last couple of albums (2015’s Tracker and Down the Road Wherever from 2018), I can forgive him. Like most of his fans, I can never get enough of his unique guitar shrills, high-level grooves, and introspective narratives. This album is so worthy of the listener’s time for its quality alone, we get the added feature of it being one of Knopfler’s most expressive albums.

In recent interviews, Knopfler has testified to being happy and busy with life now that he doesn’t expect a return to touring. He’s also said that many of the songs on One Deep River  contain “some autobiography.” That leaves the listener to conclude that the album’s stories are either about others, but more likely, about a man whose age (74) has given him the ability to express his experiences outside of his stated bliss.

That ability reveals itself in the haunting “Black Tie Jobs.” Over a waltz beat, he sings in the voice of a friend consoling someone who has lost a loved one:

“So sorry for your trouble, tell me to take a walk and I would understand. Of course it’s good to talk, here take my handkerchief, no I don’t need it back. Please don’t worry.”

With the help of old Dire Straits keyboard hand Guy Fletcher’s co-production (Knopfler: “Guy and I can slip in and work and I don’t need to have the band sessions”), Knopfler is never far from the blues.  “Scavengers Yard” proves that the album has room for light drama. The song includes the only hard-guitar sound found in this album, as the band cooks over a jagged beat while he sings:

“Never had a sucker come on like this. He’s giving me arthritis; I feel like I have grown a set of claws. I’m not going to let this one slip, and I don’t intend to lose my grip. Now that I’ve got him in my jaws.”

Knopfler has said that as a teenager he devoured James Joyce and Seamus Heaney, and considers Irish writers to be a “fantastic gift to the world.” His past albums enabled his Irish respect to come right out of the musical closet with bagpipes, whistles, Irish harps and fiddles all being up front (an example is “Darling Pretty, the opening track from his first 1996 solo album Golden Heart). Although this current album does not offer this kind of mix of instrumentation, the listener is treated to a poetic landscape when he sings about the dark leaders of the world on “This One’s Not Going To End Well”:

“Still after he’s gone, they’ll whip up old lies, to ride into power and history comes back from hell. Give a tyrant his way with a club and a gun, this one’s not going to end well, for anyone.”

Growing up in Blyth, England, just a stone’s throw from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Knopfler features the city’s famous arched bridge on the album’s cover. He’s said in recent interviews that the ballad “Watch Me Gone” is all about when you decide to leave home. “I think the feeling of crossing the Tyne [river] has become symbolic to me. I think that the whole idea of leaving provincial England and going to live in London or New York or both, that’s stepping out. That’s me crossing. You’ve got to be ready to leave and fall in love with the big city.”  With a pair of female backup singers, Knopfler shares his most personal insights with us as to what he was going through at the beginning of his career:

“And the songs were pushing harder all the time. Wasn’t your fault, then again it wasn’t mine. Broke, frustrated and obsessed, you saw me as ridiculous, I guess. And I didn’t know from nothing, not even my own voice.”

Considered one of the biggest acts of the 1980s (their Brothers In Arms album was the bestselling album of 1985, and the first CD format to go Platinum ), the world can only be thankful that Mark Knopfler took that crossing seriously. One Deep River reveals one deep artist.

-Steven Valvano

Photo: Mark Knopfler, 2006 (Volkan Yuksel via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Volkan Yuksel