Who would possibly have thought Sting had a touch of pretentiousness in him? <\/p>\n
I kid, I kid.\u00a0 Very few artists other than Sting would have had the courage and dedication to release an album in the vein of Songs From The Labyrinth<\/i>. That said, this sort of project begs its creator to indulge and revel in his or her own ego. <\/p>\n
\u2026Labrytinh <\/i>\u00a0was a long and laborious project for Sting, according the liner notes he has been planning out this album for roughly 20 years. The end result certainly shows the effort; this is not the kind of album one could toss off as a fulfillment of a record company deal. <\/p>\n
For those who are not in the know, Songs From The Labrynith<\/i> is a classical album, with Sting interpreting the songs of the legendary lutist (how often does one get to say that?) John Dowland. If you haven\u2019t heard of him, that\u2019s all right — the man died in 1626. One would have to think, however, that the man would be pleased with the work Sting has done here. <\/p>\n
Sting himself did not play an instrument on this record; his main contributions were vocals. What results are some of the most affecting vocals of the man\u2019s career. Each lyric is invested with spirit and a certain level of understanding; Sting\u2019s efforts to interpret Dowland\u2019s ancient words rarely seem inappropriate. Meanwhile, his main collaborator Edin Karamazov contributes some beautiful pieces, though nothing too radical. <\/p>\n
The one major bone I have to pick with this record comes with the spoken-word pieces scattered throughout the album. Taken from Dowland\u2019s letters, these \u201csongs\u201d truly reek of the aforementioned pretentiousness. Not interesting in any sense, they fail to reveal any deep potential connections between the modern listener and Dowland. I\u2019d call them filler, but this album is short enough as it is. <\/p>\n
The production is excellent, very much understated, but that was the point. In ye olden days, a man like Dowland would have no accompaniment save for his instrument. For the most part, Labyrinth <\/i>plays out in this manner. The touches of modern technology are heard sparingly, with exceptions coming usually in a multi-tracking of Sting\u2019s voices on a track like \u201cFine Knacks For Ladies.\u201d <\/p>\n
I most certainly respect Songs From The Labyrinth<\/i>; again, this was not a throw-away album. Yet its uniqueness will probably prevent Sting fans from \u201cgetting it,\u201d and newcomers seeking another \u201cRoxanne\u201d will be sorely disappointed. Still, it\u2019s always welcome to hear a major artist attempting something this radical. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6137],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-40347","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sting","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40347","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\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40347"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}