2010年 12月 12日 日曜日 06:43

Love Over Gold is an incredible departure from the Strait's previous three albums. It is so incredibly mature, so dark, so much deeper than the material coming before it. It's been described as their progressive album. It also incorporates their standard rockabilly and introduces Jazz.

The album begins with the whopping FOURTEEN minute long atmospheric opener Telegraph Road, which is amazing. Amazing. I love the way the song opens up, it makes you feel like you are walking along a dusty road. The guitar is what most people probably find great here, and it is good but the lyrics are probably the best thing about this track. It tells the story of the evoloution of society. It begins with the phenomonal "Along Time ago came man on a track/walking thirty miles with a sack on his back/he put down his load where he thought it was best/made a home in the wilderness. And then goes on to tell about the churches, schools and lawyers that emerged and the rules that came with them. There's one moment I like imparticular and that is when everything slows down and Mark Reads the line "6 lanes of traffic, 3 lanes moving slow." Probably my favourite moment in music ever. Just perfectly written and performed.

What comes next is another one of Knopfler's best compositions Private Investigations, Knopfler plays a P.I. and tells us about his occupation. The lyrics are great and Knopfler's reading is great. It features great acoustic guitar. And after the lyrics have been "sung-talked," Illsley starts up a great repititive bass lines and the rest of the band jams over it. The distorted guitar that suddenly jolts you is great. This song is great on the album but it kept getting better in live performances.

Industrial Disease comes next. I must admit I wasn't too keen on this track when I first heard it, but repeated listens have made me appreciate it more and more. It's got a great beat and is almost like a precursor to Walk of Life with it's signature keyboard riff. The lyrics are pretty clever. The highlight of which is when the character goes to see Dr. Parkinson (You've got smoker's cough from smoking/Brewer's Droop from drinking beer.) A great moment is at the end where Knopfler says "I'm off, I'm sick." Awesome.

Love Over Gold is one of the least-loved tracks off the album, but it's still great. Knopfler gives an extremely good vocal performances here and the piano is great. It also has an amazing outro. The song is apparently written about the same girl Knopfler wrote Romeo & Juliet about, the same with the next track;

It Never Rains, which has a great chorus and features some inventive lyrics by Knopfler, the only negative of this song is it drags on a slight bit, when really it doesn't need to.

Pick Wither's drumming was at it's best on this album, it was too bad he left.

Overall this is one of my favourite albums and was a big jump forward for Marky and the Boys. It gets better with every listen, it's so damn good.

A+

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