Brothers In Arms [Remastered] - Dire Straits > Reviews > Still Engaging

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Good
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Beautifully crafted songs, understated musicianship, several radio hits
Disadvantages:	A far cry from the non - commercial band people came to like to start with

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Well at the time this album was released it was about as different as what could be possibly imagined by anyone already familiar with the straits, dire straits, communique, making movies and love over gold were all previous albums, all of which became massive hits but none of them had anything on them to hint at the direction they would take for this and yet even though they did something completely different and unexpected with brothers in arms, it still went on to be hugely popular in fact a whole lot more so than all the other albums that dire straits had ever done, which just goes to show how big they were, in fact for a time this was the biggest selling album in the uk ever

So any good?
Well nothing on this album is particularly heavy but the songs themselves are all beautifully crafted and all have instrumental passages in them that are wonderful to listen to and instantly recognizable to even the most casual music fans
The lyrical themes on this album do tend to drift from one sadness and disappointment to another and in actual fact end up as a collection of love songs on the most part, but there are moments when Mark Knopflers casual observations of us as a society do work brilliantly for instance on the song money for nothing when the songs main character is whining about how easy other people seem to get things when hes still struggling

The album itself mostly consists of songs that the casual music listener will have heard of such as the title track brothers in arms, sporting event favourite walk of life and mtv's unofficial theme song money for nothing, but it boasts so much more for instance your latest trick has one of the best pieces of saxophone music I have ever heard and so far away is such a laid back masterpiece that i'm surprised there are not people out there trying to make a career off the back of its simple but sublime set-up

Overall this is an album that is already sat hiding in the bottom of an awful lot of peoples record collections, but it ought to be on the front shelf because this album although notoriously uncool in recent years is still a really engaging listen and kicks the collective butts of most things that most people have in their collections
So if your one of the unlucky ones who do not have this album then you really owe it to yourself to invest in a copy

"For the record as some of you have already pointed out, this review is already on play.com as are my other reviews, but as i'm the one who wrote them I figure no harm has been done because i'm not trying to take credit for someone elses work, supershaggy is one of my alter egos, I hope that clears some things up"