From pitchfork.com on The Studio Albums 1978-1991:

tats don’t lie, but the tales they tell can be misleading. Take Dire Straits, who were by any measure one of the biggest rock bands of the 1980s. Their 1985 LP Brothers in Arms was a blockbuster on par with Thriller, Born in the USA, and Purple Rain; for nearly a decade, it held the title as the best-selling British album ever, before being dethroned by Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. Yet singer and guitarist Mark Knopfler’s fame quickly eclipsed the rest of the band, including bassist John Illsley, the only member who stood alongside him in every one of the group’s incarnations. Musicians came and went with regularity during the group’s heyday, the cast changing as Knopfler and Ilsley refined their silvery, slithery hybrid of British progressive rock and American country—a curious, improbable fusion that Dire Straits made seem logical, perhaps even inevitable. In doing so, the group acted as the bridge between the ’70s AOR and ’80s MTV, shepherding a transition from faceless arena rockers to flashy video stars.

Brothers in Arms benefited greatly from MTV. The network placed the computer-animated video for “Money for Nothing” into heavy rotation, sending the album into the upper reaches of the charts, a place it would call home for the better part of a year. The video’s success could be called a fluke, but the album appealed to legions of sophisticates who couldn’t be bothered with MTV. Its novel production—a DDD affair, in the parlance of the times, meaning it was recorded, mixed, and mastered digitally—appealed to audiophiles, and its reputation for sumptuous sound helped make it the first million-selling compact disc. But beneath the digital gleam, Dire Straits’ debt to roots rock was evident, particularly in Knopfler’s mellow growl and clean, deft guitar solos.

Dire Straits discography and songs: Music profile for Dire Straits, formed November 1977. Genres: Pop Rock, Rock, Roots Rock. Albums include Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits, and Love Over Gold. Dire Straits emerged during the post-punk era of the late '70s, and while their sound was minimalistic and stripped down, they owed little to punk. If anything, the band was a direct outgrowth of the roots revivalism of pub rock, but where pub rock celebrated good times, Dire Straits were melancholy.

A tension between polish and grit was evident from the start, as the 2020 box set The Studio Albums 1978-1991 illustrates. Containing nothing but straight reissues of the six studio albums the group released during its lifetime, the set contains nary a frill. (Regrettably, the 1983 EP Extendedance Play, with its giddy new-wave single “Twisting by the Pool,” isn’t here, nor 1984 live 2xLP Alchemy.) But that modesty helps draw connections between records, tracing the band’s growth while underscoring its constant attention to detail. Heard collectively, these albums suggest that Dire Straits were a far artier band than their reputation suggests, with a subdued sense of adventure that propelled the group throughout its career.

Artiness was not a quality associated with Dire Straits back in 1978, when the band released its eponymous debut; the UK was in the thick of punk rock, yet Dire Straits were tagged a pub-rock band. There was some truth to that label. Knopfler and drummer Pick Withers both played in the regrettably named Brewers Droop, who managed to go not much further than their hometown of London during their brief lifetime in the early ’70s. And Charlie Gillett, a renowned London DJ whose Honky Tonk show was one of the pub-rock scene’s epicenters, gave early airtime to Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” demo, an act of generosity that quickly led to a record contract for the band. “Sultans of Swing” certainly had a tinge of country rock; Knopfler skated up and down his fretboard with ease as he growled half-spoken lyrics about a group playing Dixieland jazz and Creole music in South London.

“Sultans of Swing” is their self-titled debut’s snappiest number by some margin—its only rival in hooks is “Setting Me Up,” the record’s tightest cut and also the one song that could be comfortably be called country—but it also contains much of what makes the album beguiling: Knopfler sketches scenes, setting his ambiguous, evocative scenarios to vamps that hint at both melody and groove without quite coalescing into either. Ghosts of an imagined American West float through Dire Straits, but despite the imagery, rhythms, and instrumentation, the album keeps drifting towards an amorphous atmosphere that betrays the group’s British roots. It hints at other styles and sounds without quite committing to either earthiness or mind-expansion. The elusiveness is one of its pleasures: the band’s identity lies within these margins.

Once “Sultans of Swing” turned into an unexpected smash on both sides of the Atlantic, Dire Straits rushed out Communique, tentatively expanding their reach while Knopfler honed his songwriting and co-producers Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett stripped away some of the slipperiness producer Muff Winwood had brought to the debut. Their rhythmic evolution is immediately apparent as the album bounces into focus with the reggae lilt of “Once Upon a Time in the West.” The band’s dreaminess is less apparent here, but it surfaces on “Portobello Belle,” a lovely, relaxed character sketch that shows Knopfler’s growth as a songwriter, as does “Lady Writer,” a “Sultans” rewrite that’s sharper than it should be.

Knopfler wasn’t the only one so enamored with “Sultans of Swing” that he wanted to recapture its magic. Bob Dylan enlisted the guitarist and Withers for support on his 1979 gospel makeover Slow Train Coming, and Steely Dan hired Knopfler to play on “Time out of Mind,” a highlight of their 1980 magnum opus Gaucho. Dire Straits were now operating in the big leagues, and they chose a correspondingly big-league producer for 1980’s Making Movies: Jimmy Iovine, the producer behind big hits by both Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.

Working with Knopfler at his side and AOR airwaves in his sights, Iovine gave Making Movies considerable muscle. The album reaches its apex with “Sold Rock,” a macho bit of hard rock that leans into its rock’n’roll puns, but the record’s heart lies within its first side, where the triptych of “Tunnel of Love,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Skateaway” realizes Dire Straits’ most romantic, cinematic tendencies. None of the three are love songs in the traditional sense; they’re songs of longing, songs whose bittersweet nature suggests better times. The sentiment runs throughout Dire Straits’ catalog, and Iovine’s canny production gave it definition and direction. The closing “Les Boys” muddies their rose-tinted glance at the past, however: A jaunty bit of after-hours vaudeville, the song is meant asa sideways salute to post-war Germany’s gay cabarets, yet the lyrics’ stream of stereotypes and Knopfler’s audible sneer undercut any claims of affection for his subject. It’s a sour note on an album that otherwise finds Dire Straits hitting their stride.

Instead of pursuing the AOR direction of Making Movies, Dire Straits took a leftward detour with 1982’s Love Over Gold. Apart from the lively “Industrial Disease,” Love Over Gold abandons any lingering pub-rock vestiges for a full immersion into prog rock. Frontloading the album with the 14-minute “Telegraph Road”—the remaining four songs are all shorter, but usually only by an order of half—the band positions itself way out in space, a journey assisted by the addition of keyboardist Alan Clark and rhythm guitarist Hal Lindes. The additional musicians allow Knopfler and Ilsley to drift, pushing texture into the foreground and underscoring the group’s often unspoken debt to Pink Floyd—an inevitable comparison, thanks to the crawling keyboards and dextrous single-note guitar solos. In places, Dire Straits sound almost like they were working toward a rock-oriented spin on new-age music, one where the sonics overwhelmed the songwriting.

Songs came crashing back into the spotlight on Brothers in Arms. Stripping away the excesses of Love Over Gold, Dire Straits distilled a shimmering, atmospheric sound that could withstand industrial-strength rock’n’roll, cowboy laments, and heartache alike. That delicate balance between songcraft and austere atmosphere is key to the album’s phenomenal success: It could appeal to traditionalists and modernists alike. Some of Knopfler’s sturdiest songs are here, such as the pining “So Far Away” and “Why Worry,” a tune so lovely the Everly Brothers covered it soon after its release. Listening to Brothers in Arms decade

Dire Straits Full Discography