Music review: An Evening with Mark Knopfler and Band, Hydro, Glasgow
An Evening with Mark Knopfler and Band, Hydro, Glasgow ****
The cinematic Americana of new cuts like My Bacon Roll sat nicely alongside older, folkier travelling tales of migrants like Why Aye Man, and the hitch-hiking odyssey of his youth, Matchstick Man, reflected a journeyman dedicated to touring for the foreseeable future. Postcards from Paraguay added a little Latin flavour, with Knopfler’s murmuring vocal eclipsed by the dizzying speed of his fretwork, the well-drilled but loose band enveloping him as an ensemble, the horn section to the fore. Prior to that, the dryly shuffling Once Upon a Time in the West, with its bluesy underpinning, and the defiantly heartfelt ballad Romeo and Juliet whetted the appetite for more Dire Straits material. The juggernaut encore of Money For Nothing sated it, that joyously swaggering riff reverberating around the arena. Closing, it was sentimental but apposite that the Glasgow-born guitarist ended with Going Home, his evergreen theme from Local Hero.
JAY RICHARDSON