In my (very personal) opinion I think every MK album that was released after "The Ragpicker's Dream" is mediocre - as an album. Although every single one
contains really great songs (5.15 am, Back To Tupelo, The Scaffolder's Wife, In The Sky, So Far From The Sky, Piper To The End and so on), the albums as such are just a collection of songs whereas STP and RPD are more have a "real" album concept feeling. I know a lot of people do not like RPD, but it is unique in style and atmosphere from Mark's complete Oeuvre which is what I expect from a real artist. Every Dire Straits album had this special album feeling, but with Golden Heart Mark started to change this. GH was great but an overview of every single style he could think of at that time. Then he had a great creative phase from 2000 until his motorcycle break. I also sometimes think that Chet Atkins' pass away changed something in and took something from Mark's music.
The exitement of listening to a new MK album gets less and less over the last years for me because I always find more and more quotation from the own work and more and more scaling down of composition, production and not at last guitar playing which is a pity.
LE
