Love Over Gold [Original recording remastered]

The opening and longest track Telegraph Road sets the scene. It is an epic song taking up a third of the albums running time on its own, with a single keyboard note opening that must have surely been influenced by Pink Floyd 'Shine on you crazy Diamond'. The song continues with a story being told of industrial rise and decline and the piano teasing the listener with hints of an ending, eventually building up to an awesome finale where Dire Straits up the tempo and let rip, ending on a scale they would never reach again.

Private Investigations can only be described as an absolute classic track and for me, beyond criticism. The track successfully carries emotion and opens with the piano and acoustic guitar playing off against each other. This partnership continues throughout and builds up to the powerful piano chords and drums, which evoke such emotion at the end. This track never fails to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Industrial disease is possibly the most commercial track on the album and is almost daring to be cheerful. I get the feeling this track is very much tongue in cheek and almost feels a little out of place on this album, but ends up providing a bit of light relief. It sometimes comes as a shock on the CD when this track begins so comparatively abruptly after the slow ending of 'Private Investigations.

I don't think even Mark Knopfler fully knows what the title track is all about but is up to standard and is worthy of title track status. There are some beautiful and intriguing lyrics in this track but I won't repeat them here, you will have to buy it to find out, and that acoustic guitar\piano partnership appears again to good effect.

'It never rains' is a good finisher and couldn't be anywhere else on the album. It is strong enough to end on but couldn't appear any earlier. It only perhaps seems less impressive because of the sheer quality of the earlier tracks.

This album is far from commercial and perhaps this is part of its appeal. The songs are unquestionably presented on a grand scale, but the album avoids being pompous and self-indulgent. It seems far removed from the early albums 'Dire Straits', 'Communiqué' and the heavily Estreet band influenced 'Making Movies', and so far way, (see what I did there) from the obvious radio friendliness of Brother in Arms and later release On Every Street, which lacked focus and direction. Also at only 5 tracks Love Over Gold long is devoid of any fill-in tracks or excess and is perfect. It is one of the most complete albums I own and is one of my all time favourites. As I write this review the songs are going through my head, and I only hope my words have done justice to one of the finest albums ever released by any artist. I return to Love Over Gold from time to time and rediscover it all over again, and it is never anything less than a pleasure. Like I said earlier, if you only ever purchase one Dire Straits album, buy this one.

"Telegraph Road" is followed by the sinister "Private Investigations," reminiscent of Alan Parsons's interpretation of the Poe classic "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" (listen to that steady beat underneath the instrumental part and tell me you don't hear the "Tell Tale Heart"), and as daring and elaborate in its composition as "Telegraph Road." Both pieces are made possible by the advent of Alan Clark and his skills as a pianist; and yet, here as there it is Knopfler's guitar play that takes front and center stage. Next is the wicked "Industrial Disease," followed by the album's title track, and last, "It Never Rains," Knopfler's bow to Bob Dylan, rendered in an interpretation so true to life that you inadvertently feel yourself transported back by a decade or more and expect him switch into "The Times They Are A-Changin'" any second. One may wonder why the record, given its mostly gloomy and cynical mood, was not named for one of the two equally stunning and dark first tracks. Perhaps, however, the answer lies in the title song's last verse: "It takes love over gold and mind over matter to do what you do that you must, when the things that you hold can fall and be shattered or run through your fingers like dust."

The album's cover rightly (although somewhat unnecessarily) describes "Love Over Gold" as "one of Dire Straits' most ambitiously conceived projects to date" and points out that it "reflects almost a year's worth of meticulous attention." Short of his film music (which he was not to start writing until a year later, with "Local Hero"), this album was the closest yet that Knopfler has come to classical composition; not just in the record's first two masterpieces but right down to little details like the xylophone air underneath the title track. It was a hard act to follow, even for a Mark Knopfler; and his virtually only choice was to take his music into other, and more diverse directions ("Brothers in Arms"). Listening to the remastered CD version of "Love Over Gold," you almost forget that unlike its mega-selling successor this recording was not "made for CD;" which in itself speaks volumes to the quality of the sound engineering and production and, more importantly, to the indeed "meticulous attention" given to every single instrumental and human voice of every single track on the album. In all of its 41+ minutes, and although it does not reflect as wide a range of musical styles as Knopfler’s later work, "Love Over Gold" is one of the most complex pieces of recording he ever produced. It may have taken the release of "Brothers in Arms" to propel Dire Straits to worldwide fame forever. But it is impossible to listen to "Love Over Gold" and not recognize the unique talent of a man who, having found an initial foothold in the musical scene through the success of his band's first three albums, here made it clear once and for all just how much more the world had yet to expect from him.