Mark Knopfler/ Dire Straits

Reissues UMC/EMI

New vinyl spins for the Straits’ mammoth hit and Knopfler’s warm-up soundtrack.

Showcased on

Sultans Of Swing, fancifully decorated on

Romeo And Juliet and really let fly down

Telegraph Road, by 1983 Mark Knopfler’s guitar work was revered enough in its own right to make his soundtrack album to Bill Forsyth’s Scottish comedy drama Local Hero (6/10) as much of an event as the film itself. Despite the record’s cinematic forays into Celtic folk (The Mist Covered Mountains), easy listening jazz (Boomtown) and ballroom balladry (Gerry Rafferty gives The Way It Always Starts his best Scott Walker), it acted as the guitarist’s solo album, particularly on hell-for-leather hoedown Freeway Flyer and the glorious final theme Going

Home, a track marrying euphoric sax rock to an entrancing ceilidh melody (and which empowers Newcastle United’s home games to this day).

Expanding his atmospheric palette on Local Hero brought added depth and texture to the fifth Dire Straits album Brothers In Arms (9/10) too. Your Latest Trick continued the soundtrack’s occasional lounge and jazz inflections, while the title track, the weightless Why Worry and the bombastic moments of The Man’s Too Strong benefited from a similar big-screen vision. Lashed to plush 80s production and the band’s most MTVfriendly tunes yet (Money For Nothing, Walk Of Life, So Far Away), Knopfler’s guitar became a core characteristic of the 80s mainstream and sold 10 million copies as the cover star. The definitive, they say, doesn’t date, and Brothers In Arms has lost none of its substance and standing in 35 years as soft rock’s Olympus.