David Knopfler - Crow Gifts (2024) CD-Rip

While everybody’s been obsessing over his older brother’s forthcoming album, David Knopfler has released a fresh record too. Titled “Crow Gifts” and available for streaming now, with a very limited run of CDs planned for February 8th, it marks the first two-year gap in the annual-issue schedule veteran implemented back in 2019 – but then, 2020 saw him put out a brace of platters, and David also was recently involved in HELD BY TREES’ "Solace" so Knopfler wasn’t doing nothing in the interim.

This will be his 23rd solo offering, hour-long and comprised of 18 pieces of which 15 are David’s originals, two of them concert takes on earlier cuts, one co-penned with THE DREAM ACADEMY’s Gilbert Gabriel and two – including Woody Guthrie’s evergreen “This Land Is Your Land” – covers. Produced by Knopfler himself, it features such stellar instrumentalists as guitarists Hal Lindes, another DIRE STRAITS alumnus, and Duke Levine, bassist James Hutchinson, and drummers Martin Ditcham and Geoff Dugmore, and, thus, has a robust underpinning for its set of introspective, yet entertaining, songs.