You can bet the new album will not be different.
Judging the book from the cover, i bet that the new album will be another mess like DTRW. Full of GF Noises and 'bee sounding' organs.
I trully hope that the Mark's Jazzy songs has stopped in 2019.
Same with tours. It's at the same time a remarkable consistency, but on the other hand — a bummer. It has to be done intentionally.
One of Mark's catchphrases is "There is no formula". Of course, he's saying it regarding songwriting, but it applies to his whole career it seems. The formula is don't mess up with the formula, whatever it is. And I don't think Mark even knows what it is, he's just comfortable and doing exclusively what he wants to do, and the consistency is the byproduct of that. If he'd been under more pressure like at the beginning of DS, the results could be better.
Yes.
He is comfortable with his results and, as you said, there is no pressure over him. He keeps the his formula.
There is another thing about his releases that i don't really like.
I explain:
When i started to do do a deep search about DS/MK music, at the time, there were very few "extra material" about him. There were the Golden Heart Demos and, about 2002, some live performances and bonus material from the RPD singles/special editions...
People like me, who have listened every unreleased/unnoficial/b-side.. material from DS/MK, wanted to hear new songs, even if these songs were poor or weak songs. Just for the fact to hear new material from MK.
The magic about Mark's music was that an artist with his magnitude has few disposal material. He is a recluse guy, with brings more and more curiosity about his work.
Albums like MM or LOG had 7 and 5 songs there, half of them are anthems for us.
Half of DS's material are gold. This is huge.
Seems to me that, the MK's production team discover that urgeness about his 'non releaseable' material.
What happens were, since the Get Lucky release, they started to release almost anything that Mark recorded since then.
So, there are too many songs from album since then.
The extra/deluxe/diamond... material is released together with the album, what is, in my opinion, a wrong strategy. It makes his new releases do loose strenght.
If the official ambum could have 12 well fitted and crafted songs, and the fillers was released months later as (Sessions for Album X)... well. Problem solved.
They could put all the trash inside these 'Sessions Releases'.
I coud imagine the Privteering album with 12 songs max and the Blues songs released months later (i know this was in MK's mind back then)
Even DTRW could be a great album if cutted by half.
I listened to n YT episode about DTRW and the host said: "Mark Knopfler trows away what could be as absolutely great album if there as very less songs on it"
Totally agree.
I hope that he starts to release EP's here and there from now.
