Romeo and Juliet

Well, this is revelatory.

I've got an odd relationship with Dire Straits. (Not that they know that: it's complicated, as they say.) I liked them back in the day, sometimes a lot. I listened to them for scores of hours, but mainly just the Making Movies and Brothers in Arms LPs. But time moves on, as it will, and we sorta fell away from each other—the fact that they more or less ceased to be a working band shortly after I left for college probably didn't hurt, of course.

And then I heard this Indigo Girls cover the other day. It's not exactly new—it's from their 1992 album Rites of Passages. But it's new to me and, really, isn't that the important thing? And, what's more, it caused me to look at the original song in a new light.

Mark Knopfler is many things: a good songwriter and an amazing guitarist, for instance, and a vocalist of some distinction—but passion is not one of his hallmarks as a singer. Which isn't to say he's emotionless. Far from it—his whispery vocals on the song "Brothers in Arms" conveys, as much as the ominous backing track, the underlying drama and pathos.

Which is why this cover is so effective. Amy Ray doesn't hesitate to unleash the melodrama of the lyric. And while in other hands and other contexts that could easily slip into overkill, but by not gender swapping the lyric, ala "Then He Kissed Me/Then She Kissed Me," and for obvious reasons, Ray brings a new and compelling context to the song—including lines such as "when we made love you used to cry"—that takes the exact same material and makes it even more powerful in its stripped down rendition than even the already magnificent original.

The slow fadeout on Making Movies, featuring lovely guitar work by Knopfler and restrained keyboards by the great Roy Bittan, was already fantastic. Ray's desperate and knowingly hopeless acapella vocal is even more heartbreaking.

Sultans of Swing

This makes me perhaps unreasonably happy.

Okay, sure, maybe there are a few places where his fingering isn't quite as clean as Mark Knopfler's—but on the other hand, let's see Knopfler play the solo this well while casually and cheerfully chatting with the crowd and thanking them for each contribution.

Why Worry

I'd never seen this before, but the way they play with the melody and the timing and yet never lose each other for a moment is staggering. And as Peter Lubin wrote in a fantastic Popdose piece, an amazing thing about the Everly Brothers is that, unlike other close harmony singers, they never watch each other's mouths: they stare into each other's eyes or look out at the audience.

Also, that's, uh...that's a pretty decent lil band there.

My 25 Favorite Songs Part IV

10) “Woman”—John Lennon, 1980. This is a “time-and-place” song for me, having first heard it within days of Lennon’s being killed. I was an emerging Beatles nut at the time and had no idea what his death would mean for every person who would ever come to worship at the Beatles altar. This love letter to Yoko Ono is musical romance at its straightforward best. And thank God he got to say it before it was too late. “Let me tell you again and again and again…I love you, now and forever.”

9) “Achin’ To Be”—The Replacements, 1988. I’ve gone into depth about my love for the Replacements. This is not their best song, but it’s my favorite. Paul Westerberg was his generation’s finest songwriter, and his hoodlum poetics never sounded so sad, elegant, and lonely as this waking look at weary self-discovery (it even includes a wry gender-flop to give it an air of further detachment.) He’s written dozens of take-your-breath-away lyrics before and since, but this is Westerberg at his mature best. “She’s kinda like a poet who finds it hard to speak; the poems come so slowly, like the colors down a sheet.”

8) “Why Worry”— Dire Straits, 1985. A hushed, lullaby-like ballad spotlighting the water magic of Mark Knopfler’s Stratocaster. Pretty and seductive – I used to drift off to sleep at the end of some late, late college nights with this playing.“Just when this world seems mean and cold, our love comes shining red and gold, and all the rest is by the way.”

7) “Fall on Me” —R.E.M., 1986. Just a beautiful rock song, with wondrous descending harmony and melody lines that seem to go on forever and an undeniable pop hook. R.E.M. was music for people who felt different and needed something different; a club for people who didn’t belong to clubs. And this may very well be their best song, as well as my favorite. “Buy the sky and sell the sky, and bleed the sky and tell the sky, ‘Don’t fall on me.’”

6) “Rain”—Beatles, 1966. Probably written as a throwaway, but this is the height of Lennon’s fuzzy psychedalia and musical mathematics. It led to dozens of barely listenable hippy-dippy copycats, but this one is the genuine article. The first time I heard it was as a kid, finding it buried on Side 2 of the Hey Jude collection, just when I thought they couldn't get any better. The harmonies are magical, and Ringo’s at his very best, too. "Shine, the weather’s fine.”