I keep the flame there for you wherever I go

Continuing my trip back through the 2015 album charts.

22/03/15 : Tracker - Mark Knopfler


I'm not a huge fan of Mark's post-Dire Straits stuff, but I can't help but feel this is going to be a welcome lightly bluesy/country/folky palate cleanser after Seasick Steve.

Yeah, it's nicely unchallenging with, unsurprisingly, some nice guitar work - I particularly liked "Lights Of Taormina" and "Whenever I Go" (his voice works well with Ruth Moody's). I'd struggle to describe the whole album as compelling but there's nothing offensive about it - unless you're offended by inoffensiveness, I guess. You do get the impression that Mr Knopfler is just noodling about without putting a load of effort into it, but I feel he's earned his right to do that - he's 75 now, after all.

We're at #3 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a surprisingly long fourteen week run with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Kendrick Lamar (a new entry), Sam, Ed and a Van Morrison duets album (another new entry which actually sounds quite interesting) and we have one more new entry in the top ten for Marina (#10), which I obviously like!

Wikipedia has more than you'd expect on the album, but most of it is about the critical reception, which is incredible detailed but basically says "yeah, they liked it". Commercially, it did waaaay better than I was expecting, making the top five across most of Europe and getting to #1 in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany and Norway - and even getting to #14 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" JK Moreno, The Notting Hillbillies, Jochen Gareis and, oh yeah, Dire Straits. I don't really have anything more to say about this album - it's got some pretty nice noises on it, but there's no danger of me ever going back to it.

15/03/15 - Stop making Grandma swear, kids
29/03/15 - No, no, no, no

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