DIRE STRAITS (1978)
Key Tracks: "Sultans of Swing," "Six Blade Knife"
Quick Take: Dire Straits was originally a band, a four-piece whose singer and lead guitarist, Mark Knopfler, happened to do the bulk of the writing. Over time, however, the group slowly became less a unit than Knopfler plus backing players. On one level, this had a certain Darwinian inevitability to it; being both a winningly acerbic tunesmith and virtuoso guitarist, it was only natural that Knopfler would come to the fore. But it's a mistake to assume that Dire Straits was little more than the Mark Knopfler show because, as their recordings make plain, this was clearly a case of the parts exceeding the whole. The quartet's first success was an insinuating bit of bar-band mythmaking called "Sultans of Swing." Even though Knopfler's lyrics paint a vivid picture of an overlooked and underappreciated pub combo, what ultimately reels the listener in is the laid-back insistence of the band's rhythm work, a quality abundant throughout Dire Straits, from the Dylanesque flavor of "Wild West End" to the galloping groove of "Down to the Waterline."