After listening to the disappointing Communiqu\u00e9<\/i> from 1979, hearing Dire Straits\u2019 third album, Making Movies<\/i>, is a welcome change. The difference is immense. While Communiqu\u00e9<\/i> was a sad attempt to recreate their first album, Making Movies<\/i> was a new, fuller sound. By this point, Mark Knopfler\u2019s brother David had left the group, and Mark brought on board Springsteen engineer Jimmy Iovine to produce, who in turn brought along keyboardist Roy Bittan. This production resulted in a richer sound, which when coupled with Knopfler\u2019s writing, comes off as almost cinematic.<\/p>\n
Knopfler\u2019s songwriting also makes a change on this album as well. He had always employed dense poetic imagery on his songs, but here the lyricism is tighter and the stories carry further.\u00a0 Once married to the musical tracks, they come together in masterful style. What\u2019s more, they hold together well, even though their length would suggest that they could not. Take the opening track, \u201cTunnel of Love,\u201d which stretches beyond eight minutes but can hold the listener\u2019s interest throughout with tempo changes and sheer energy. \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d is a beautiful blend between the classic love tale and a heartbreaking love affair gone wrong. Here, the picked guitars weave effortlessly with the keyboards until they explode into a chorus of electric guitars before quieting down once again. \u201cSkateaway\u201d is a similarly stellar example of Knopfler\u2019s lyricism, this time painting a tableau about a roller skating girl on city streets.<\/p>\n
Making Movies<\/i> also contains more of an \u201carena rock\u201d feel on songs like \u201cExpresso Love\u201d and \u201cSolid Rock,\u201d which was a new departure for the group\u2019s sound. Even though these songs are less memorable, they fit into the \u201cbig sound\u201d effort that Iovine and Knopfler were bringing out for the album. \u201cLes Boys\u201d floats back into the old, stripped-down Dire Straits sound as it ham-handedly makes fun of the homosexual club acts the group had seen in Germany (where Dire Straits always did very well). As disappointing as Communiqu\u00e9<\/i> was, it went to number one there, while only reaching the 11 spot in the US, and five in the UK). While this song may offend some modern sensibilities 30+ years later, it is an interesting change in sound for the album, and a good song to end the disc.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
After a successful first album, which in itself was a sonic departure from much of the popular music of the late \u201870s, and then a rehash of that sound for their second offering, it was time for Dire Straits to make some changes and show some musical development.\u00a0 Making Movies<\/i> demonstrates that growth in a serious way. Knopfler is coming into his own as a songwriter, and the band was headed for some great things in the \u201880s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":31849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5751],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43571","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dire-straits","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43571"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43571"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}