Dire Straits

Table of Contents

Albums

Brothers In Arms (1985)

Brothers In Arms cover

  1. “So Far Away”
  2. “Money For Nothing”
  3. “Walk of Life”
  4. “Your Latest Trick”
  5. “Why Worry”
  6. “Ride Across the River”
  7. “The Man’s Too Strong”
  8. “One World”
  9. “Brothers In Arms”

“We’re fools to make war on our brothers in arms.”

I don’t know why I like the Dire Straits as much as I do. When you break it apart, they’re really a pretty uninteresting and predictable band. I do dig Mark Knopfler’s minimalist guitar style. He gets by as a songwriter, but the dude’s light on original ideas and usually surrenders to boring blues jams. He occasionally has clever or even brilliant lyric ideas—the title track here is one of the few rock classics to emerge from the eighties—but usually, he gets by with lines like “I’m tired of making out on the telephone” and a smirk.

I do, for the most part, like this album, though, so what can I say? It fills a nice void, if nothing else; the eighties were mostly remembered for bad music and bad fashion (“See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup,” indeed), so my music collection seems to have grown around it like a forest after a fire. I guess I need more Elvis Costello. But anyway, this album lives and breathes the eighties without being sickening about it. “Money For Nothing,” for instance, is as biting a social commentary on the MTV generation as you can make while still pandering to said MTV generation (for God’s sake, Sting sings backup). But hell, it’s catchy and not too boring at nearly nine minutes.

The other obvious highlights are the reasonably catchy “So Far Away,” which ties the title refrain to a neat tonality change, and the unreasonably catchy “Walk of Life,” which ties everything to the impossibly saccharine synth hook. After that, the care-free lyrics (about rock and roll, no less), perfectly timed waves of background vocals, and Eddie Cochran–style chuggy guitar are downright exploitive. After that, the problem with the album becomes sequencing; these three tracks happen to be the first three. Once “Walk of Life” finishes, there just ain’t much to look forward to. The remaining tracks more or less blend into each other; they tend to play around with a moderately interesting melody for a while and then degenerate into boring blues jams (and I like me some damn blues jams, but you’ve gotta have some direction or a point). But they still have good pop sensibility overall, so it’s listenable even if it does drag on a bit. “Your Latest Trick” has a sax part that’d make Kenny G proud. Come to think on it, the entire album veers dangerously closely to “adult-contemporary, easy-listening crap.” I have two side B faves, though. “The Man’s Too Strong” has an excellent folk melody and a needlessly loud chorus that’d make Kurt Cobain proud (after the boring middle part of the album, it’s damn near revelatory). I also love the somniferous closer “Brothers In Arms”; it’s boring—the vocal is, not surprisingly, tired—but that contributes to the mood. If you’ve got a song that actually benefits from a sleepy atmosphere, then here’s a band you can fucking count on. It’s as good a showcase of Knopfler’s gruff vocal delivery and lyrical guitar playing as you can imagine. Some tasteful synth-work too, so you don’t forget what year it is.

J.C. Fields

Last modified on Sunday, December 5, 2021.