As I see it, of the three remaining albums in the poll, we have the two most similar DS albums - the debut album and Communique - along with Love Over Gold, which I think represents the biggest departure from their previous albums. To put it another way, you could say we have two apples and an orange! I have to say Love Over Gold is my favourite album, so I thought it would be interesting to do a head-to-head comparison between the first two albums. I award a point to my preferred song in each pair to see which album comes out on top overall.
As both albums have nine tracks, this is relatively straightforward and in most cases I have paired the songs by the order. I swapped Portobello Belle with Single Handed Sailor because I think the former has more in common with Wild West End (I have always felt these two tracks are somewhat similar, most obviously because both songs have lyrics describing parts of London, but also because neither song has a guitar solo), leaving the latter paired with In The Gallery instead. I have highlighted my preferred song in bold for clarity.
Down To The Waterline - Once Upon A Time In The West
Water Of Love - News
Setting Me Up - Where Do You Think You're Going?
Six Blade Knife - Communique
Southbound Again - Lady Writer
Sultans Of Swing - Angel Of Mercy
In The Gallery - Single Handed Sailor
Wild West End - Portobello Belle
Lions - Follow Me Home
Total points: Dire Straits 5-4 Communique
The debut album wins fairly narrowly by this measure. I think that side two of the first album is particularly strong, so I find interesting to note that the debut album track wins in three of my final four pairs. On closer analysis, however, I'm confident that I rate the debut more highly. There are three pairs where I significantly prefer the debut album track to its Communique equivalent, most obviously Sultans Of Swing (in my opinion the best track on either album, and my second favourite DS song overall) very comfortably beats Angel Of Mercy, I also much prefer Six Blade Knife and Lions to their equivalents on Communique. By contrast, the only pairing where I think the Communique track easily comes out on top for me is Where Do You Think You're Going against Setting Me Up. Most of the others are fairly close, with one extremely closely matched pair, Down To The Waterline and Once Upon A Time In The West, I've always loved both but the guitar work on the latter impresses me just a bit more.
All subjective of course but I found this a fun way to compare the two albums - my vote again goes to Communique, although that's no slight given the tough competition.
