Get Knacked!

Rip It Up, Issue 25, 1 August 1979, Page 10

Get Knacked!

The Knack

Get The Knack

Capitol

Get The Knack is a very likeable record, I like it. Formed in May ’7B The Knack established a reputation around their native Los Angeles and further afield in southern California that lead eventually to a contract and the recording of this first album.

It was produced under the experienced direction of pop maestro Mike Chapman whose recent work with Blondie, Nick Gilder and Exile can hardly have gone unnoticed by anyone who’s passed within a finger-pop of a tranny lately. The album was recorded in 11 days flat during last March, an almost indecently fast piece of work in this age of "come and throw together your next masterpiece at our studio/‘Shangri-La Delux’ and stay forever if you want Zeppelin racing and undersea picnics at no extra charge”.

Most of it was recorded in one take and the freshness shows through. The songs are good and the band plays with controlled attack, letting the songs’ inherent dynamics work at their most direct and effective level. The Knack's hooks are better than Cheap Trick's (who are an obvious comparison stylistically) and they don’t resort to slick heavy metal ploys to beef them out. Like I said, they let the songs work on their own strengths by doing what's needed and no more.

"My Sharona" is a bit of crunch-pop that’s already getting a thrashing on the world's radios and we’ll all hate it soon (like "Roxanne") but it still sounds great at the time of writing, “Siamese Twins (The Money And Me)” is a neat song about something nasty and recalls Stories slightly. However the major influence on the album is possibly Rubber Soul Beatles or thereabouts. “Your Number Or Your Name” is a delight with moments of humour and an overall feel that shows these guys are enjoying their work, and "Maybe Tonight” ’s delicately assured arrangement even features a touch of good old-fashioned backwards instrumentation. The vocals on "Good Girls Don’t” are suitably leering considering the unspeakable practices detailed in the lyrics, and they also do a Buddy Holly song! You’re right ... Get The Knack is about sex, drugs and rock & roll and you oughta try it out.

Terence Hogan

Dire Straits

Communique Vertigo .

The success of a ‘sleeper’ like Dire Straits’ fresh first album can make expectations for the follow-up unreasonably high. Reasonable or not, the expectations are high and Communique doesn’t meet them. Certainly that sound is there the J.J. Caleish pulse, punctuated by Mark Knopfler’s popping guitar. The ensemble playing is spot on, although it’s intriguing to note that the production by the revered Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett (of Muscle Shoals fame) is not a noticeable improvement over the job done on the first album by the much-maligned Muff Winwood. Musically, the album is fine and Knopfler’s guitar lines are fluid and refreshing. The problem is that the songs don’t measure up. On the first album the songs were low-keyed but they stood as songs in their own right. Knopfler seems to have exhausted his melodic gifts; the tunes are virtually interchangeable and too often the lyrics seem strained rhyme for rhyme's sake, as in: Sitting on the fence, that's a dangerous course Might catch a bullet from the peacekeeping force Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest Once upon a time in the west. The central theme of Mark Knopfler’s music is the loner, a modern Shane against the odds. But in the context of Dire Straits’ breezy rocking this myth-making seems top-heavy, weighed down with significance. If the clarity and economy of Knopfler’s crisp guitar playing had been extended to his lyric writing Communique might have rivalled the enviable standard of the first album. Instead, it is a mere echo.

Ken Williams