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BLUES, COUNTRY, AND FOLK IN THE SILVER CITY
Or a wedding on the prairie
Many times I have heard people/important experts criticize Mark Knopfler for not updating his sound and guitar style, claiming he’s been releasing the same album for twenty years. These detractors might have a point, but how can you blame an artist when he presents us with works like this?
"Sailing to Philadelphia," released in 2000, is a very enjoyable album. It is enjoyable for its gentle blues ballads like "Baloney Again" and "Wanderlust"; it is enjoyable for its refined duets like the title track (with a sweet and very inspired James Taylor), "The Last Laugh" (intense blues with Van Morrison) and "Prairie Wedding" (a soft prairie wedding with Gillian Welch); it is enjoyable for its country-folk that flows as crystal clear as a mountain stream ("Silvertown Blues," "Speedway at Nazareth" above all).
At some moments the album manages to be more than pleasant, for example when the former Dire Straits leader brings back his smooth and fast guitar in the exceptional opening track "What It Is"; in other moments, in my opinion, the author risks falling into complacency, as in "El Macho" where it seems to me he wants to imitate the worst episodes of the late Roxy Music.
I find the production particularly commendable, careful and very clean, and I don't want to exaggerate by saying that lovers of the warmest and purest country-folk might hold some of these very clear ballads in their hearts, to warm up on winter mornings or to walk in good company among the Sienese hills...
"Games you thought you'd learn
you neither lost or won
dreams have crashed and burned
but you're still going on
out on the highway with the road gang working
up on the mountain with the cold wind blowing
out on the highway with the road band working
but the last laugh, baby is yours
and don't you love the sound
of the last laugh going down?"
"The Last Laugh"
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