Album Reviews

This superbly recorded, meticulously produced collaboration reminds me of an expanded version of Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’ “Happy Trails.” It’s packed with nostalgia and exudes a wistful, “see you around” vibe that at times gets downright suffocating.

“This Is Us,” a thumb through a middle-aged couple’s photo album of memories, turns “When I’m Sixty Four” into “We Are Sixty Four.” That’s followed up by “Red Staggerwing,” a courting,’ boastin’ song (“If I was a Maserati, a red 300, I’d ride around to your house, baby, give you a test drive”), that requires Knopfler and Harris to deliver some heat and chemistry, but unfortunately, they stay in their respective recording booths.

A “let’s rekindle the spark” tune, “Belle Starr” (I’ll be your Belle Starr, you can be my Jesse James”), lacks the lusty playfulness needed to sell it so it falls flat.

Even tunes meant to inject some drama, like the rippin’, slide guitar driven break-up tune “Right Now,” fail to work up even a simmer for me.

You may react differently. The recording is as pristine and conservatively cast as the performances. It’s a distant, detailed and crystalline sonic perspective, with smallish images skillfully placed in space, almost like miniatures in a cutaway dollhouse.

The mostly ADA recordings (dual 16 track analog recorders, transferred to 96K digital and then mixed to 1” analog tape) have a clarity, dimensionality and transient precision that anyone addicted to well-organized studio sound and precision-mixing will appreciate, but like connecting with the music, only if one can step back and appreciate a cool, semi-distant perspective.

No doubt, judging from the album title and road weary song of the same name, a long look back was Knopfler’s intent. Unfairly, when I think of Emmylou Harris pairing up with a countrified singer, I naturally arrive at her collaborations with Gram Parsons, back when they were both young and the fresh and the unexplored open road beckoned.