Mark Knopfler
Tracker
VERVE
5/10
Like many of his aging contemporaries, Mark Knopfler is such an accomplished and successful musician that one can appreciate his work without realizing how proficient it is. Take the opening song on the artist’s eighth solo record Tracker—“Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes” comes in swinging like a Saturday night jazz club combo, yet once the vocals enter, the track fairly seamlessly switches to a fiddle-led Irish folk song. The subsequent ten songs on Tracker don’t stray far from the established Knopfler aesthetic—muscular mid-tempo bluesy folk, anchored by the artist’s middle-aged growl and judicious use of his overly impressive electric guitar work—and after that first burst of musical innovation, Tracker’s shine wears off and the LP ends up being pretty dull. While the mid-album funk jam “Broken Bones” does add some garage-rock swagger to the mix, it’s not enough to keep listeners along for the ride.
