A Mark Knopfler album It is the closest thing we will find to a refuge. A safe place in which to take shelter and find shelter, protection and warmth against the elements; the vital ones and also, of course, the sound ones. Nobody expects a revolution in the career of a man who in the summer will reach his third quarter of a century, has credited an overwhelming career for almost five decades (he was one of those who started relatively late) and has nothing to prove at this point. Or yes: that his capacity for endearing stories and riffs memorable is imperishablecircumstances that in both cases one deep river proves incontestably.
The man from Glasgow knows he is a wise old man who has earned all the legitimacy to continue walking his own path without owing explanations to anyone, beyond the fact that The brilliance of his years as a mass hero is now far away and that the big media spotlights will never point now to an album as beautiful as one deep river. Their loss. The creator of Dire Straits has not been affected by that vital and metaphysical urgency of pressing the accelerator in the last stretch of the road – unlike what has been happening to Van Morrison, Neil Young either Dylan himself– and has let them pass six years since Down the road wherever (2018) to pick up the speech right where it left off. That was a beautiful album and this one now seems adorable. Because she supports that unique and unmistakable mix of country, jazz, blues, folk and light guitar, with a few drops of Celtic heritage (Sweeter than the rain or, among the five additional themes of the expanded edition, Along a foreign coast). And she does it with a polygraph-proof honesty, with the calm pulse of someone who knows that their speech has been forged only with truths.
And it is that sincere speech that magnifies an album like this, devoid of fuss, swings or virguerías, but with one of the most addictive guitar motifs of its signer in many decades. (Ahead of the game) and at least two other candidates to join the list of classics in the repertoire, the sizzling Two pair of hands and the portrait of the subjugator Janine. But the best thing about this septuagenarian Mark is his ability to measure the skills of a portrait painter with concessions to sentimentality and nostalgiaalways more measured and endearing than invasive.
The bridge that shines on the cover and next to the one portrayed inside is the one that crosses the Tyne in Newcastle, the city in the north of England where he grew up. AND That central theme that closes the album is musically linked to that Brothers in arms which served as the final point in 1985 for their Dire Straits’ most successful album, in the same way as the touching Black tie jobs could pass for an adaptation to the rhythm of a waltz Why worry?from that same LP.
Mark Knopfler’s life is no longer going to change at this point. The world will lend to one deep river only relative attention, but yours, More than a river, it seems like an oasis.
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