Sting
Songs From The Labyrinth

Stinc. I would like to, I can't, but still... I can.

This time the tantric stinger wanted to go overboard without sparing expenses and without doing even a minimal examination of conscience!

Here is indeed this new album "Songs from the Labyrinth" which seems like the classic move of someone who "doesn't know what else to come up with" to try to gather approval given the declining inspirational flair marked by the last pop (?) albums of low artistic value.
And what does the billionaire naturalized Tuscan invent, between a harvest in his endless vineyards (by now famous is the "Rossanne" D.O.C.) and a gallop among the Maremma hills on horseback of the faithful purebred Copeland?! "Great idea" seems to have said the balding Viking "I'll release an album of John Dowland (London, 1563-1626) songs that is very cool and snobby and I'll get a plethora of violas, cellos, violets - and I'll even add Viola Valentino for the backing vocals!”
Adding “miiiiiiii trooOOppo cool... maybe I'll just compose a concept album about how cool I am...”

And so it is that the graying Stinc made this neither fish nor fowl album that only has the merit of "dissatisfying" the purists of classical music (published under the Deutsche Grammophon label, not peanuts, eh?!) and, at the same time, "disappointing" the plethora of fifty-year-olds (female) on the verge of menopause who would do anything to at least once hear the blonde policeman's bass make a couple of slaps in their now-out-of-use lower parts.
(It's known that the bulk of the "normal" rock audience has abandoned him for at least the last 10 years).

A precious album, terribly whispered tending to the limp (maybe as was in the original intentions... who knows what dawns in the minds of these artists!) in a pseudo-academic style that touches the kitsch, thanks to a "soft" and decontextualized voice that would like to interpret very improbable arias unsuited to his voice, now more prone to old pianobar crooning than to noble and cultured excursions like this.
A bit like hearing Nick Cave sing "O Mio Babbino Caro" or Bocelli singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Frankly embarrassing, isn't it?

The album is essentially an uninterrupted parade of "songs" (Arias? Fragments? Entrails? Pancakes?), interspersed with a few instrumental pieces (practically useless except to stretch the sauce) and some brief readings excerpted from the poor Dowland's letters (more fillers of little substance than actual fully completed pieces) who must still be turning in his grave.

The songs vary like the movements of an Eno airport suite (practically at the minimum wage): from the classic gloomy melancholic atmospheres for which the original author was famous (one of his most famous compositions is "semper dowload semper emule semper dolens" which, amidst many tears, the old Englishman even marches with irony, far ahead of his time) to more energetic and lively snippets (?!) even to hints of semi-ludic/jolly tones (in its intentions) but that (in reality) would only make Fernandel’s grandmother or Gino Bramieri’s mother-in-law laugh.
Stinc seems absolutely lost in this repertoire completely new for his strings, and we imagine him sipping sandalwood-flavored tea while reveling as a Real Casanova using all the timbres of his flexible and pleasantly dusty voice as much as the noise of a Worker Folletto on the dining room Kilim at speed 2.

Unfortunately, Stinc couldn't care less about WHAT he is singing and that the genre IS completely different from what his discography has triumphed over the years; he goes on undaunted with his half rock and half soul style messing up the technique and making the arias (born with completely different intent, given the period of the Early English Baroque) revolve around his uvula that, as blessed and golden as it may be, IS STILL AN UVULA THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO with the music it should interpret.

Oh sure, we're told that the original scores have been kept intact, and even the keys have been respected and there are even hints of light polyphonic scores, like in "Can she excuse my wrongs" but it doesn't change the fact that this album is incredibly boring and sycophantic, frighteningly slow and stuffy-nosed already oozing from the ultra-luxurious packaging in tetrapak-bow.

Stinc says in his defense: "I am not a professional of this repertoire (oh really?! Ed.) but I hope I have managed to give these songs that freshness (anything but freshness, damn it! Ed.) that maybe a more experienced singer wouldn't have been able to bring. (how arrogant Ed.) For me these are pop songs of the 1600s, and that's how I perform them; beautiful melodies, fantastic lyrics, and genius accompaniment.”

He may be a big smart-aleck, but to me, this singer seems everything but that Stinc of a saint he continues to pretend to be.