And now, for some Sting
In recent years, the husband and I have stayed away from Sting's new albums. I guess Brand New Day marked the start of the unfaithfulness. And All this Time was so bad that we decided Sacred Love is best ignored. So we've been out of touch with any of his new releases, having lost the interest to keep tabs on the man who seemed intent on tailoring himself for pure commercial success.
Among the many things that the husband has passed on to me, one that I really appreciate is a taste for the old Sting. Nothing like the Sun is such a charm. Soul Cages and Ten Summoner's Tales have many nice numbers. Fields of Gold is a good collection of the best of Sting. And these are CDs that have been put to tremendous use in our household. Forever flavouring the background.
So much for flashback, wistfulness and gripe.
This morning, I came across a review of Sting's new album in the New Republic. The review is hardly flattering,With Songs From the Labyrinth, Sting has given in fully to his critics' worst charges. Perhaps becoming a minstrel of Elizabethan lute songs will liberate him and free, free, set Sting (and us) free from his labyrinthine pretensions. Then again, Sting may well feel perfectly at ease with Dowland's grandiloquent bids for favor with the aristocracy of his day. Songs From the Labyrinth has earned Sting an invitation to sing and play his lute for the present-day Queen Elizabeth. If some admirers of his early rock records have felt betrayed by Sting in recent years, one reason consistent with the coldness and pretense of his music is a sense, magnified by images of him luting for the queen, that he would like to abandon rock royalty for the real thing.
But the review has gotten me curious enough to give Songs From The Labyrinth a fair chance. At least a few times of listening for him having taken the pain to rescue John Dowland from the sixteenth - seventeenth century.
