Knopfler is as naturally gifted a guitarist as I’ve ever heard, with a particular take on fingerpicking and the blues that doesn’t line up with anyone outside Senegal. His songwriting is a post-Boz Scaggs hipster variety of cynicism, which somehow ends up triangulating Television and Steely Dan. How did he do that? And what did Knopfler really want to do at the end of the day? Before he drifted into monied whimpering and barroom bloviating, he made this crystalline album that sounds to me like Very Awake Tom Verlaine or Tom Waits aerobicizing. The playing is a plastic, electrical thrill. There are few musicians I enjoy as much and understand less.