Word: direness
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Dylan's real savior on this album is the music. With all the divinely inspired lyrics, one might expect other-worldly music as well. Instead, a very mortal Mark Knophler of Dire Straits plays impressively of Slow Train Coming, and many of the melodies, like the melancholy "I Believe in You" and forceful "Precious Angel" carry the lyrics. Most of the music on the album, in fact, is very well produced and performed. But no one is going to say that any potential classics are hiding in this album. From the very weak "When He Returns" to the strong "When...
...Dire Straits: Communiqué (Warner Bros.) and The Cars: Candy-O (Elektra) are two follow-ups to albums that were large -and largely surprise-hits some months back. Both offer again pretty much the same bill of fare, without the single tune that snags your ear straight off and streamlines the journey to the Top Ten. The Cars, a Boston band, go big for flash, echo and cosmic inconclusion. Dire Straits are English and purvey a sort of oblique narrative rock so relaxed and laid back, with its easygoing guitar licks and sleepytime vocals, that the record could have been...
Company officials deny that the payments were bribes and claim they were sales commissions and consulting fees. In any event, the two-year investigation by the SEC has put ISC in dire trouble. Unable to meet its payroll since April, it has piled up $24 million in losses, and trading in its once highflying stock has been halted by the American Stock Exchange...
Women's magazines every June or July publish chattily dire warnings about the "Vacation Blues." These articles are invariably accurate. One does expect too much from vacations and winds up feeling disappointed and even inadequate, as if one had somehow not lived up to the occasion. One does toss through the supposedly sweet idleness with a lump of Calvinist guilt under the mattress; the jauntily go-get-'em "I need some work to do" does conceal, for all its Freudian banality, some sense of unworthiness: you don't deserve the pleasure of a good vacation...
...this dire saga, Polsky has fashioned a grim drama about the existential anguish of last resorts. The play is fascinating even when its revelations are most appalling. Presented at off-Broadway's Hudson Guild Theater, Devour the Snow differs markedly from the spate of terminal situation dramas now in vogue in that it does not possess a moment of comic relief. Polsky means his play to be harrowing...