Dire Straits - Dire Straits (1978)
Ideated from: In a way, the 80s started in 1978. A lot of huge 80s artists and their signature sounds were just debuting or just getting up to speed in 1978.
Mark Knopfler loves to write songs about songs, and about playing songs. Sultans Of Swing here is an early example, about a band that’s just playing because they love to play. Elsewhere in the catalog, you get Romeo & Juliet (refrencing West Side Story) and Walk Of Life (about a busker). It’s adorably nerdy, and he’s super good at it.
Regardless, though, this first Straits album was a real breakthrough. There had been lots of British blues for decades, but this was an evolution: shuffling and goovy, but with gritty lyrics that weren’t just boilerplate American blues concerns of lost women and gambling debts.
The band hadn’t transitioned into the (seemingly unlikely) stadium-rock band they would become in the 80s. But you still get Knofpler’s insightful songwriting emerging fully formed, along with the beginnings of his signature bouncy and assertive guitar sound that could take over a track very unassumingly.
Tracks I Liked
Six Blade Knife - my personal fave on this record, for both the nastiness of the lyric and the deceptively blazing guitar line.
Sultans Of Swing - Their first great success, and one that has stuck around partly because it sounds like what they would do so well for years to come. Urgent, melancholy melodies with lyrics about the down and out and struggling. Then cut to a screaming guitar break.
