New music

Down The Road Wherever

Memories and introspection on Knopfler’s most Straits-like solo outing yet The last album we had from Mark Knopfler – 2015’s Tracker – saw him in serious, almost literary mode as he painted portraits of fictional lives and loves that were sparingly and tastefully set in warm, folk-infused arrangements. However, there’s a little more levity and lightness of touch about his new release, Down The Road Wherever, and a lot more autobiography. It also, at points, sounds more closely akin to Dire Straits than any of his solo material we’ve heard for a while. First of all, there’s subtle use of synths and electronic timbres from the off, as in Back On The Dance Floor, which tells the tale of a clapped-out British rock act who find themselves in vogue again – and in the mood to capitalise on their revived fortunes. Knopfler chips in those languid, effortlessly tasteful licks of his, every few bars, jotting them here and there like an artist’s signature at the bottom of a painting. But there are unexpected quirks here, as well as the familiar. Witness My Bacon Roll, a song built around the internal monologue of a middle-aged man, by turns irritated and bewildered by corporate team-building activities, bowling nights and other signs of progress that merely make him feel old. By contrast, Drovers’ Road, is a kind of Celtic counterpart to Brothers In Arms in mood, if not in theme. Knopfler’s sparse but eloquent playing is as warming as a dram of whisky on a cold winter’s day, here. But, arguably, we hear the real depth and quality of Knopfler’s present-day writing in Matchstick Man, a sparse and rather brief ballad in which he tells a story about himself as a young man, hitchhiking home from a gig in Cornwall. It’s honest, simple and oddly profound – a poem about youth that evokes those moments when all of us stand, unsure but ready, at a crossroads, waiting for our life to begin. [JD]