Sting
sacred love

THE REVIEW

The Ecstasy of the Glossy.

With the super box set of the live reunion of the Police still ringing in my ears (never was a Christmas operation so blessed by the Divine), I decided to retrace with an older ear the discography of one of my ancient heroes. Sting.

Seeing him in Turin with the Police more than twenty years after I vainly tried, with my excited friends, to imitate their music, was a religious experience. Finding them in the Christmas box set and being able to enjoy them from the comfort of my couch was adult bliss, perhaps boastfully post-rock and laid-back, but bliss it is and remains.

I then imposed on myself to listen again to everything and understand. Starting, obviously, from the end. From this very glossy and outwardly perfect album, where every sound is in its place, everything is recorded, played, and interpreted at its best. But, indeed, I remembered it as an album that didn't work, that didn't "spin".

And today, after the minimalist genius of the Police, I can only reconfirm my impression in front of a baroque, overabundant, and supremely useless work like this. And, let it be understood, I say it with a heart pierced and bleeding.

Almost never have I found myself branding a Sting/Police work as useless. There was always something to say, and there was always an effort to say it at its best. Of course, in the penultimate "Brand New Day", one could already hear the noises of the collapse, the ominous notes of the already (too) heard.

Here it gives in to an, for me, unforgivable vice: baroque excess. Every track will have at least fifty overdubbed layers, with choruses over choruses, violins over violins, percussion over percussion. In a pseudo-ballad, the ever more unbearable (and incomprehensible)................. makes an appearance. Everyone goes crazy for her (the U2, for instance, so much so to allow her to shriek and warble over a classic like "One", moreover impudently), but, alas, even if the renowned ones love her, I, like Totò, "am not intimidated" and offer her all my vegetables (the first time she comes into my sights).

The tracks succeed one another in the perpetual hope that the next one will make a mark, which, regularly (except for one exception which I will talk about), does not happen.

And the album ends well symbolized by its flashy and glossy cover.

Of course, one can't expect Sting not to be diligent, as one can't demand that he not be beautiful. Fate and merit granted him beauty and precision, seriousness, and talent. In short: a capable and fortunate man. Who, however, in some splendid cases (the entire Police work, then, to mention the first ones that come to mind, "Soul Cages" and the live "Bring On The Night") managed to pull out the soul and make well-calibrated use of it, even in the context of evident — but pleasant, there... — diligence.

Everything to be thrown away, then? In my view, no, absolutely not. I find there to be a hidden little masterpiece, never made a single and ultra(self)-referential: "Never Coming Home". Here electronics and multi-vocals are beautiful and well-calibrated, the instruments all well in place, and the final long piano solo is nothing short of splendid, also built along the lines of a beautiful solo by the late Kenny Kirkland on "Bring On The Night". An original and successful tribute. Truly remarkable.

But, unfortunately, a drop of Caol Ila in a very flat sea of water (heavy).

They say a new studio album was ready before the reunion with the Police. If he scrapped or suspended it because it was the second part of this, he did well. If he can no longer recognize the value of his own work and scrapped or suspended something good, it could be a shame. We shall see.

For the future, given — it seems — the impossibility of a new Police-style work, I would suggest closing oneself in the Palagio, drinking a few bottles — he produces good ones... — and making a nice album as a quartet: drums, piano, guitar, and Him, voice and bass. Surely, it would turn out well.

In essence, bringing no more than an eight-track. It's an order.