Mark Knopfler: Get Lucky (Reviews)

The former Dire Straits guitar god continues to expand his sound, with an enjoyable, mellow collection of ballads, blues shuffles, and Celtic folk songs.

Like a college student to free pizza, music critics often seem to experience an intense magnetic pull to compare any new Mark Knopfler solo release to his work with Dire Straits. As time has passed, however, that comparison has proven less and less useful. First, Knopfler has now spent more of his musical life outside Dire Straits than as a member of the influential UK group he co-founded in the late '70s. Secondly, the quantity of music that he's produced as a film scorer (nearly a dozen soundtracks) and solo artist (six albums) far outnumbers the six-album Dire Straits catalog.…