Mark Knopfler …and Places

You won’t be seeing Mark Knopfler in melodramatic newspaper headlines or on talent show panels. The much-travelled craftsman prefers to reside wherever the song takes him, from writing room to rehearsal space, recording studio to concert hall. He is, as tirelessly and inquisitively as ever, on the trail of some musical truth, just as he has been since the 45s of Ricky Nelson and Lonnie Donegan, or the playing of Hank Marvin and Duane Eddy, sent him down a path that led to 125 million record sales.

Leonard Cohen's deeply personal first LPs came out at a time when many of his peers were issuing furious, counterculture-inspired rants; he clearly had little interest in sticking with the pack at the time. So it makes a certain kind of contrary sense that Cohen would put out an offbeat, topical collection two-and-a-half decades later. The Future is an odd duck of an album; it's also brave, funny, and fascinating. "Give me back the Berlin Wall/ Give me Stalin and St. Paul", Cohen petitions sardonically in the title track, adding, "I've seen the future, brother: it is murder". "Can't run no more with the lawless crowd/ While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud", he intones in "Anthem"; in "Democracy", he name- checks Tiananmen Square while surveying the United States ("The cradle of the best and of the worst"). Cohen has only improved with age as a vocalist; here, he sounds like a cross between Mark Knopfler and Barry White.