Mark Knopfler
Down The Road Wherever
The superpower of the guitar god is the ability to instantly de-trad a song with a flick of the plectrum. No matter how far Mark Knopfler wanders down Chris Rea’s road to northern country-blues traditionalism – nine solo albums now, and little sign of turning back – his silken licks still lift his songs into the realm of the timeless. Down The Road Wherever is full of such moments; Gallic reminiscences laced with rich riffs, or wild-west country noirs like Nobody’s Child breaking into solos that make them feel like sepia turn-of-thecentury photographs being pored over by a sultry angel.
Aware that he’s spinning ageless sounds, Knopfler blurs the album between antique historical portrait – take Trapper Man’s glistening sepia mountainfolk story of living off the cruel land, or Drovers’ Road, a brooding throwback to a lost rural idyll – and gritty, solemn northern biography like My Bacon Roll, about an office worker quitting the middle-management rat race to spend his days lost in Wetherspoon meal deals. One Songs At A Time does both, merging the Deptford roots of Dire Straits with imagery of 19th-century dock workers.
But the album is most revealing when Knopfler bares autobiographical teeth; when Heavy Up turns into a louche, Latino rebuff to his critics, or when the album’s reflective, whisky-bar tone lifts with subtle snatches of electronica on Good On You Son, a future blues about a Brit kid taking on LA’s industry vultures. Stay on these roads.
mark beaumont