Here we have, ladies and gentlemen, the Two Faces of Sting.<\/p>\n
Mercury Falling<\/i>, the 1996 release from former Police frontman Sting, finds the enigmatic rock\/jazz\/pop\/what-the-hell-is-he-doing-now bouncing back and forth between extremes like an poorly-medicated bipolar at a trampoline competition. He goes from serious and portentous to the closest he’s been to relaxed since the Police went by the wayside; he dabbles in sea shanties and twangy country; in short, this CD is all over the map. Yet it’s oddly infectious; this is the Sting CD I remember the best, and indeed I’m not even listening to it now while I write the review. I know what it sounds like.<\/p>\n
And to be honest, what it sounds like is a roller-coaster ride, the musical equivalent of the list of pros and cons you wrote in college to decide whether to keep dating someone. The production is elegant, clear, and textured, but that’s a given on a Sting CD; to have poor sound quality would be some sort of offense against his personal Muse, who is apparently a neat freak \u2013 and that neatness dulls Mercury Falling<\/i> at times. The CD is almost sterile in places; songs like \u201cValparaiso\u201d and \u201cI Hung My Head\u201d lack the real pathos needed to make them work. (If you doubt that, compare the late great Johnny Cash’s version of \u201cI Hung My Head\u201d to Sting’s original. To paraphrase the immortal Otis Redding when speaking about Aretha Franklin’s cover of \u201cR-E-S-P-E-C-T,\u201d that old man done stole Sting’s song).<\/p>\n
Of course, just when I want to make a sleeping generalization about manufactured and cerebral pop, Sting lays a whammy on us \u2013 several, in fact. \u201cHounds Of Winter\u201d is, in my opinion, the greatest solo song Sting has ever done, nudging out \u201cFortress Around Your Heart\u201d by a nose. Rich with imagery and chilling sound, \u201cHounds\u201d is a dark tour de force. \u201cYou Still Touch Me\u201d and \u201cI’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying\u201d are brilliant, especially the twanging steel guitar on the latter. (Yes, I said steel guitar.) \u201cAll Four Seasons\u201d is that rarity, a genuinely funny rock song that is not a parody \u2013 and it doesn’t hurt at least for me that I have some personal reasons for really loving it. (What can I say; the song reminds me of someone I love.)<\/p>\n
Mercury Falling<\/i> just won’t stand still. There are at least three different CDs here mashed into one like a multi-car pile up, and it’s exhausting. But any CD with \u201cHounds of Winter\u201d and \u201cAll Four Seasons\u201d can’t be all bad; in fact, it’s pretty good \u2013 if not a little exhausting. If you want consistency, look elsewhere. If you’re willing to pan for gold, this is a good place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6137],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40344","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sting","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40344"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}