Knopfler gets a new package

I sat down to listen to One Take Radio Sessions. It was good. It was really good -- great songs, Mark Knopfler's excellent voice. But then I thought, wait, haven't I heard these songs before?\nI had indeed.\nSeven of the songs come from his 2004 album Shangri-La, the eighth comes from Golden Heart (and the soundtrack to the 2001 film "Bandits"). Knopfler, the former frontman for Dire Straits, has an easygoing, Brit-meets-Americana sound and songwriting style which he brings to One Take Radio Sessions. \nBut is Knopfler recycling his old stuff into a pretty new package? Kind of. If there's one flaw with this album, it's that it's a little too perfect. There's just enough audio dust to let the listener know that this is a live recording. \nBut that doesn't mean that it's not an excellent album. Knopfler shows up with his excellent, laid-back guitar skills, and his voice sounds great here. The songs were lyrically and stylistically great the first time around, and this second time, they're even better. "Boom, Like That," which tells the story of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds, is a fabulous piece, and the diggy little "Donegan's Gone" is a particular high point. The sound quality is great -- so great, in fact, that it barely sounds live. It just sounds too good. That's not to equate rotten sound quality with live music, but it's generally a sprinkling of quirks and baubles that makes a listener feel like they're at a concert or in the studio with an artist. There's none of that here. \nThis album feels vaguely like a mixed CD I might have made by myself. I like the ordering of the songs much better than that on Shangri-La, and the addition of "Rudiger" to this group of songs is a good fit. But it's hard to comment upon any song in particular, because the live recordings are so minutely different from the originals. But if your style is laid-back and generally acoustic, it seems ill-advised to me to record an album of pristine live songs. What's the point? If I were a lesser listener, I might feel a little ripped off. \nSo if you're a big fan of Knopfler's, pick up One Take Radio Sessions. If you don't know Knopfler's music, pick up Shangri-La.