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Tracker (album)

Tracker
Tracker Cover.jpg
Studio album by Mark Knopfler
Released 16 March 2015
Recorded British Grove Studios
Genre Rock, Folk
Length 60:40
Label Mercury, Verve (US)
Producer Mark Knopfler
Mark Knopfler chronology
Privateering
(2012)
Tracker
(2015)
Altamira
(2016)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic 70/100
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic 3.5/5 stars
American Songwriter 4/5 stars
Boston Globe Positive
The Guardian 3/5 stars
Popmatters 6/10 stars
Rolling Stone 3.5/5 stars
The Telegraph 3/5 stars

Tracker is the eighth solo studio album by British singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler, released on March 16, 2015 (17 March 2015 in North America).

Tracker was released on CD, double vinyl, deluxe CD with four bonus tracks, and a box set with the album on both CD and vinyl formats and a bonus CD featuring six extra tracks and a DVD with a short film directed by Henrik Hansen and an interview with Knopfler.

Knopfler promoted the album on his Tracker Tour, which started on 15 May 2015 in Dublin, Ireland. The tour included 86 concerts in two legs—Europe and North America—and ended on 31 October 2015 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the United States.

According to the review aggregator website Metacritic, Tracker received generally favorable reviews, achieving a critical score of 70 based on 15 critic reviews. In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album three and a half out of five stars, noting that the album is "scaled smaller" than his previous double-album effort Privateering, "easing its way into being instead of announcing itself with a thunder". Erlewine writes:

Tracker feels quieter than his new millennial norm. Some of this is due to the undercurrent of reflection tugging at the record's momentum. Knopfler isn't pining for the past but he is looking back, sometimes wistfully, sometimes with a resigned smile, and he appropriately draws upon sounds that he's long loved.

Erlewine concludes that the "skillful interweaving of Knopfler's personal past helps give Tracker a nicely gentle resonance".

In his review for American Songwriter, Hal Horowitz gave the album four out of five stars, observing:

Touches of Celtic, jazz, country and folk, but seldom rock, inform these lovely tunes that take their time as if on a leisurely stroll ... He's in no hurry telling these colorful stories that unspool slowly and deliberately. Like much of Van Morrison's best work, the relaxed pace provides the consistent thread that makes this a cohesive album instead of a batch of songs.

Horowitz concludes that the album’s "softly dignified pace, immaculately constructed lyrics and especially the immediately identifiable slithering guitar lines" all work to create "timeless songs that feel organic, measured and are clearly heartfelt as Knopfler crafts music that will sound as magnificent in 50 years as it does today."

Ken Capobianco, in his review for the Boston Globe, gave the album a positive review, writing, "Mark Knopfler continues his late-career resurgence with this skillfully crafted eighth solo effort, revealing a portrait gallery of quotidian and accomplished lives marked by yearning and reflection." Capobianco praised Knopfler's overall effort "delivering finely wrought, elegantly arranged songs of subtle depth and rich musicality". In his review for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes gave the album three and a half out of five stars, calling it "modest" and "multifaceted". Hermes noted, "Knopfler's quicksilver guitar is understated, and he delivers stories of stoic ache like an old watchmaker on a pub stool—quietly riveting."


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