Instead Muff Winwood, the guys Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett familiar this time as a producer. Wexler was already 61 years old and a very old hand in the music business. He had the album Dire Straits housed in the US by Warner Brothers, but the band said the same: 'We'll put this one out, but now let's go and make a real record (We will release this, but now let us go and make a real plate '). Later he should recognize the quality of the well in the US immensely successful debuts however ungrudgingly.
Wexler and Beckett succeeded with RELEASE but actually tease out the true Dire Straits. Even with the first song "Once Upon a Time in the West", the difference was clear: much warmer, deeper and more immediate than on the first plate sounded here the whole band and especially Knopfler's famous lead guitar. With magnificent "News" (the guitar solo in the middle moves you to tears) and gently beginning and later the pace attracting "Where Do You Think You're Going" was a perfect triad born who has no equal until today. The title track "Communiqué" (with Pianist) then ended the first LP-side very loosely swinging.
Page 2 started with the peppy single "Lady Writer", but was able to repeat the global chart success of "Sultans of Swing" not nearly. "Angel of Mercy" (transparent) and "Portobello Belle" (a bit uniform) came rather inconspicuous therefore. This was followed with the catchy "Single Handed Sailor" a melancholy masterpiece, where his Knopfler Stratocaster had wonderful wines and his brother David played a great rhythm guitar. The final piece of "Follow Me Home", a person who wants to call boring, but he has then probably not often enough heard it and especially not listening closely enough.
In the magazine 'Pardon' was then read as follows: 'Communiqué, their new album, of course, everyone knew from the outset that they would not be as good as the first (...). For me, it's better. While true, it has some of the sealed envelope on the cover - it will be long before it will be completely open. But I'm almost Phonogram grateful that they have settled any texts: no one should think he knows it - There is plenty of what comes through right away, what is meant immediately. Once the music, lots of music; and then it is not the individual texts, but the language that carries these songs. There are songs, rather for the solar plexus as the ear, full-Semitic images and archaic visions and poetry. In "Follow Me Home", the last song, you can hear the noise of the tide at the beginning and end of their depth seems to be risen '. Loving one can hardly describe it.
As with the first plate on the front cover of this LP a lost and lonely-looking woman was to be seen. The nighttime beach scene lifted from the deep blue background clearly perceptible, so that it was thought, take the envelope in his hand in order to open quietly. But that of course was not, and therefore the content of the letter is probably stuck in it forever remain a mystery.
For me connect to this album so many emotions and memories that they will certainly remain my favorite record of the Dire Straits. In their overall mood also hovers over again something of the fragile atmosphere of my favorite songs ever, the beautiful ballad "Leaf and Stream" by Wishbone Ash from their album ARGUS from 1972. I hear, to this day the vinyl disc Communiqué rather because they for my ears even more natural and organic sound than the CD.
RELEASE reached # 1 in Germany, No. 3 in Britain and No. 21 in the US. It was the last plate on which the brothers Mark and David Knopfler still held together. Then David left the band and was a moderately successful solo artist, while Dire Straits with the published 1980 album Making Movies (and the next producer Jimmy Iovine) should consolidate their careers further. The rest is rock history.
