Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Knopfler, David
Label: Dormant Music Limited
Release: 2011
Runtime: 117:11
Rating: 4/5
David Knopfler is not Mark Knopfler, but he is his brother, three years younger. Anyone who knows Dire Straits (and I’d guess that’s quite a few of you) knows that one of the founding members left his brother and the band during the recording of the album »Making Movies« (1980). Before launching his solo career, though, David Knopfler recorded two Dire Straits albums, namely »Dire Straits« and »Communique«.
A solo career followed. The Scottish musician, songwriter, poet and producer has racked up a pile of colorful albums, including collaborations with big names like Chris White (Dire Straits, The Straits) and Chris Rea. Since leaving Dire Stratis, David Knopfler has mainly been busy finding the most authentic way to bring his intimate feelings, through lyrics, closer to the listener. His exit from Dire Straits probably had something to do with that, since all the spotlight glare, the stage-set clutter and the mass delirium of concert arenas usually wipe out any trace of the genuinely intimate mood between the musician’s art-culture expression and the receiver. Interestingly, Mark also followed the urge to step out from under the floodlights, but thanks to the popularity of Dire Straits, whenever he turns up on tour or otherwise in public, he’s naturally trailed by masses of Dire Straits fans around the world.
The stripped-bare sound of the acoustics is held up effectively by David’s humming, low-to-mid-range, pleasantly caressing, slightly throaty and nasal voice, which is only a stone’s throw from Mark’s far more popular one.
The album »Acoustic« came about at the request of David’s audience, who dutifully show up to his gigs. For years now David has been working with another proven musician with a golden touch on the guitar, Harry Bogdanovs, who is known for his work with The Shadows, Culture Club, Chris Thompson (the most famous voice of rock legends Manfred Mann’s Earth Band) and Elton John. Until recently, David and Harry played live as a quartet with a backing rhythm section. But it was the making of »Acoustic« as a Knopfler/Bogdanovs duo that later gave the logical cue for an acoustic tour as a duo, and on April 15, 2012 the two musicians visited the idyllic Slovenian village of Šmartno in the Goriška Brda hills, where they gave an audience of a good hundred people an unforgettable concert experience.
This double album was essentially made like a concert, except it was recorded in the studio. The songs were played in full in a single take, which fits with David’s basic desire to serve up pure-blooded, personal, confessional intimacy that knows nothing of faking emotions. The collected material is a compilation of solo-career songs, including as many as seven previously unreleased tracks, and a real gem among them is, for instance, Southside Tenements, which dates back to the founding days of Dire Straits and which David first officially recorded and put on his solo album »The Giver« (1993). Dire Straits supposedly played the song live back in the day, but later there was no room for it on the band’s debut. While we’re at it, it’s worth remembering that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Quite a few of David’s own songs, here and there, quite spontaneously and effortlessly pull toward the melos of »electricity-stripped« Dire Straits.
The two discs of »Acoustic« present Knopfler as a singer-songwriter who carefree sails through his arrangements, starting from melodic foundations in which it’s not hard to pick up real Anglo-Saxon melancholy with a pastoral underpinning (King Of Ashes, Grace In The Gutter), occasional (but by no means excessive) leanings on blues, and a Nashville sound (True North, Easy Street). In every one of the songs, Knopfler of course wrings out his own recognizable artistic musical conglomerate, one that only his brother could possibly get close to. Given the insight and the deeply pronounced streak of originality, it’s no wonder David left Dire Straits. He needed more artistic freedom, which his authoritative brother, sadly, couldn’t offer him back when they worked together in Dire Straits. So the ideas born during the Dire Straits years piled up and piled up, and the older brother never gave them a chance on studio releases, so they waited until David launched his solo career. The flexibility and softness of the sound, as well as the genuine natural complexion of the soundscape itself, are achieved on »Acoustic« by both musicians, of course, through plenty of »fingerpicking«, that is, playing with the pads of the fingers, while on the other hand they reach a higher level of arrangement variety through the use of piano, which effectively colors the framework of the vocal accompaniment, especially on the ballads, as with Here In Geneseo, Tears Fall and Somebody Kind.
»Acoustic« is a superb acoustic album, honest and confessional, shot through with David Knopfler’s deeply sensitive personality, and Harry Bogdanovs and all his pithy guitar ornamentation add a lot to the mix. Anyone looking for a genuine connection with the charisma and rawness of any artist’s art image, especially with a singer-songwriter approach, as well as anyone who feels a kinship with the melos of Dire Straits, will find a generous helping of fun listening to this one. Maybe not quite the right title to take you on an adventure through a retrospective of David Knopfler’s released albums, but definitely an album with a special experience that very effectively captures the intimacy of moods. And that counts for something!
Lineup
David Knopfler – vocals, guitar, piano
Harry Bogdanovs – guitar, piano, backing vocals
Production
David Knopfler & Harry Bogdanovs
Track list
CD1,:
1. Hej La (Sometimes)
2. Steel Wheels
3. Depford Days
4. King Of Ashes
5. Cinnamon Girls
6. Southside Tenements
7. God’s Mockingbird
8. 4U
9. Me And Billy Crowe (for Frank Shields)
CD2,:
1. Mending My Nets
2. Underworld
3. Somebody Kind
4. Here In Geneseo (for Ella Dean)
5. Tears Fall
6, Grace In The Gutter
7. True North
8. America
9. Easy Street
