A Film Canon

Brothers In Arms culminates Dire Straits' uneasy relation to MTV, and the circumscription of arena impulses that it represents. On the one hand, the eight-minute long "Money For Nothing" viciously parodies the television station, and sees Mark Knopfler employ the dirtiest, bluesiest guitar work on the whole album, presumably in contradistinction to the song's lavish, synthesized opening ("I want my MTV..."). Yet this distinction belies the beauty of that opening, as well as its inordinate length, suggesting that the band are as seduced by (and even indebted to) MTV as much as repelled by it. This may inform their recourse to an unusually cheesy, poppy register in "Walk Of Life", but finds its most perfect expression in "Your Latest Trick" - a ballad for saxophone, guitar and keyboard that was made for that quintessentially MTV elaboration of the smoky, dimly-lit, melancholy lounge to which the entire adolescent world just happens to be invited. That said, these two tracks are notable for doing generic things well, and the album's most idiosyncratic moments come with four of the seven remaining cuts: "So Far Away", "Why Worry", "Ride Across The River" and "Brothers In Arms". Using simple, if powerful, melodic hooks as the mere springboard for ambling, lyrical, understated guitar solos, these arguably come closer to a genuine ambient rock than anything to be found in Brian Eno. Moreover, the last two tracks manage to re-extract an arena sensibility from MTV, as Knopfler both literalises and translates its preoccupation with atmosphere into a principle of his distinctive finger-picking, transforming his guitar into a kind of Aeolian harp, the mere receptacle for the brooding, ponderous weather patterns that hang over the landscapes those songs describe.