I remember very little of the 80s, although for some reason one of my more poignant memories involves sitting in a little gray Honda with my dad, whistling along to "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits. At that point in my listening career (I must've been six or so), I couldn't definitively decide whether I liked the music I was hearing or not, and would've probably been more content with Raffi, but my much-idolized father certainly enjoyed the stuff, so I stuck it out and hummed along like the best of 'em. A half-decade or so later, Dad first lent me Sultans of Swing?an album which quickly ascended to "repeat" status in my boombox. That moment marked my official initiation into the Mark Knopfler fan club?thanks for that, Dad. Anyway, I've been a devoted fan ever since, through thick and thin (the thinnest being Golden Heart, in my opinion, and the thickest Ragpicker's Dream).
Mark Knopfler is a more seasoned gentleman at this point'56 years of seasoning, to be exact. But his latest solo album, Shangri La, is devoid of the kind of circularity and staleness that you'd expect from a guy who has been in the limelight of the popular music scene for a good two and a half decades. Knopfler, former English teacher from Newcastle, was the frontman (songwriter/lead vocalist/lead guitarist) of the band Dire Straits from 1977 well into the early 90s. He kicked off his solo career in 1996 with the album Golden Heart, and has gone on to release Sailing to Philadelphia in 2000, The Ragpicker's Dream in 2002, and most recently Shangri-La in 2004. My reverence for Knopfler stems not only from his virtuosic guitar work and pleasantly gravelly baritone voice, but notably from his intelligent, starkly poetic lyrics. Basically, each track is a good?nay, excellent?piece of writing. It is the rare musician who can craft a track about the drawing of the Mason-Dixon line without buckets of schlock, multiple clichés, or fist-pounding national pride (see title track of Sailing to Philadelphia), and, even rarer, the musician who can produce a rockin', wry piece about Ray Kroc, the mastermind behind McDonald's who made his mark in the 1950s and 60s (see "Boom, Like That" on Shangri-La). But this talented Briton with a penchant for American history and kitsch manages to do that and much more, all the while with a pleasant sound.
Back to Shangri-La. In an increasingly competitive musical scene where it's "dog eat dog/and rat eat rat," this album has a niche among listeners who require more than radio-ready, mass-produced teenybopper hits. The 14-track CD thematically addresses the death of the American dream, ironically from the intimate perspective of an Englishman. The album opens with "5:15 a.m.," a touching ballad about a dead gangster, shot full of lead, lying in his Jaguar on an early winter morning?a fitting introduction to work that's all about mitigated happiness and the dark side of ambition. "Boom, Like That," addressed previously, fits in well with the ideological issues that Shangri-La revolves around, in that it is a narrative from the ladder-climbing perspective of Ray Kroc, the entreprenuer who introduced America to fast food?namely, McDonald's?in a big way. With brilliant odes to Sonny Liston, famed American heavyweight boxer ("Song for Sonny Liston") and Elvis ("Back to Tupelo"), the album truly possesses unique ties to the images and ideals of past and present America. As always, Knopfler utilizes haunting guitar riffs, unobtrusive percussion, and traditional chordal shifts to assure that his tunes are resolutely listenable as much as they are ambitious literary wonders.
Knopfler makes sure there is a surprise or two on the album. I originally thought that "All That Matters" was just a sophomoric, dull, and rather out-of-place love song, until I really started listening and let my immediate presumptions go. Don't let the countryish polka beat and plaintive lyrics fool you?the melancholic splendor of this track isn't immediately apparent, but when it dawns on you...wow. Just wow. Shangri-La comes highly recommended.