MARK Knopfler walks the other side of the road from fashion, always did in a sense.
Yet the onetime Dire Straits frontman is distinctive, forming his own sound from fleet-picked electric guitar and intimate vocals.
Shangri-La contains a strong selection of short-story songs, starting with a sad, authentic-seeming 1960s Tyneside murder ballad, 5.15am.
He then jumps the Atlantic for Boom, Like That, a lively, tuneful song based, perhaps surprisingly, on the life of Ray Kroc, the late McDonald's chief. Elsewhere, and less successfully, Knopfler tells a boxer's story in Song For Sonny Liston. Back across the Pond, he offers a salty lament for a disappearing way of life in The Trawlerman's Song. All of which may not be surprising, but is done with warmth and keen-eyed observation.
Updated: 09:54 Thursday, October 14, 2004
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