Continuing the adaptation of the album to CD format, this is an early DDD recording and despite fears to the contrary doesn’t suffer from “lack of warmth” that I could tell. In a year’s time Paul Simon will be singing that “the Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar” - the cover image demonstrates what that would look like.
The album also recognises the new reality for music with its mention of MTV on the track Money For Nothing (the “I want my MTV” part sung by Sting in an echo of the melody from his Don't Stand So Close To Me). Further to the acknowledgement of MTV, this track was accompanied by what at the time was a ground-breaking video using computer-generated polygonal characters. The build-up to the start of this one is great, and is one of the few times that Dire Straits do an up-tempo number that isn’t a bit naff (compare with Walk On Life on this album, a somewhat cheesy rock-and-roller). Sound-wise, it has a certain similarity to the tracks on ZZ Top’s Eliminator album – rocking but with that element of slick Eighties (over?) production; its familiarity somewhat overshadowing that it is, underneath, a pretty good tune.
Side Two has a collection of songs that address, essentially, combat PTSD from different angles and is, to my mind, the stronger side of the album. Ride Across The River with its marimbas, pan-pipes, slight reggae beats and anti-war message sounds like a Peter Gabriel track. Or, a Peter Gabriel track mixed with the soundtrack to a Monkey Island game, and is for me one of the more interesting tracks, about a soldier in a combat zone. The Man’s Too Strong has a country feel to it, and is a story told by somebody who has committed atrocities in wartime and is now dealing with that. Finally the title track, Brothers In Arms, is the closest to the Dire Straits tracks of the previous albums (that don’t feature in this list), on Telegraph Road or Love Over Gold for example. Long, slow, delicately constructed, this is the musing of a soldier on the nature of war and its effect not only on the narrator but on all caught up in its effects. It closes out the album with a characteristic Marc Knopfler slow and haunting guitar solo, a very solid track.
This was one of those albums that could be found in everybody’s house – for me it tended to be one that was in the music collection of my parents’ generation, not my contemporaries, and so has that kind of “uncool” association that I find it hard to shake. And like a lot of early-mid Eighties music, has that level of clinically neat production values that seems to strip out some of the emotion (despite me claiming earlier that the DDD production doesn't affect the "warmth"). For all that, it does have some pretty solid tracks on it.
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