I think In The Sky is the biggest missed opportunity in human history. The song itself is beautiful but the arrangement is so bloody bland!
That song could've been Mark's solo career's Brothers in Arms. Forget about guitar tremolos and saxphones, I love those but not in this one. I can hear the keyboards and the folkies as a bed in the background, creating that mellow and slightly trippy atmosphere. Now I can feel the buildup, first drums and bass show up and then start pushing a bit harder, Mark's Les Paul firing those stunning and melodic licks in between his vocals, it's gaining momentum... Then we explode into the chorus, In the Sky, In The Sky... everything is roaring, but Mark's kind of roaring, classy, harmonious and emotional. The song continues with this dynamics until the last bit before the final chorus. It's just Mark's voice and Guy's keyboards. So moving and delicate... then the Les Paul tears into it, shortly followed by the drums and everyone else, we hit the last chorus and then... oh, and then Mark plays the most beautiful, melodic and spiritual solo ever! And it's long, very long.
But no, we got saxphone solos and yet another repetitive arrangement. Sorry, I can't forgive that album
I think that's the great thing about Mark, why would he want to produce another Brothers in Arms? He has done that, why do it again? I don't think it fits the lyrics and personally I think the arrangement of In The Sky is brilliant, I could listen to it for hours. There is enormous amount of tension but it's still very calm, very few can do that.
What I love about KTGC is that it's different, a turning point in MK's solo career. It's the least DS-like record but still very much Mark. Just as you can't compare the first DS record with OES, you can't compare KTGC with GH or STP. He moved on and that's one of the things I didn't like about Tracker, it's just more of the same. Every record until Tracker had something new but I think every song on Tracker has been done before. Honestly I think he's running out of ideas (musically).
Whilst I agree with you about "In the Sky" - I like it very much too. I disagree about Tracker. For me it's Mark's best album to date and I listen to it from beginning to end with no skippers.
I'm listening to Tracker these days while driving to work and I have to say that I only listen three songs in a row (Laughs, Basil and Rivertowns) and from the fourth I skip ALL the songs until "Silver Eagle" and again skip tracks until the bonus tracks "Heart of Oak", "Oklahoma Ponnies" and "Time Will End All Sorrow". Just 4 songs of the main record and 3 from the bonus.
I can't stand the rest of songs, some sounds boring to me, some sounds like too low profile to me, it's from all MK records the one with more skippers. Maybe it has to do with that poor, very poor slide guitar. I don't understand why he does that. He's not good at slide, or maybe I should say he's too lazy at slide guitar to be good at it.
In the contrary, I found as a surprise that Privateering is a record which had aged very very well and I listen to it almost without skip any tracks.