Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

I've Kept This Single Faith
4 Out Of 5 Stars

For a comeback album, Sting aligned as many stars for this project as he could. "Brand New Day" features Stevie Wonder's harmonica on the title track, James Taylor drops in, as do many others. As a follow-up to the lackluster "Mercury Falling," he obviously wanted everything in its right place.

Which is odd, because the music plays with risks. The left field hit "Desert Rose" fields Middle Eastern rhythms along with an Arabic (I believe) backup vocal. Sting takes another stab at country with "Fill Her Up," complete with pedal steel and a gospel chorus at the end that exhorts, "Fill Her up with Jesus! Fill Her up with love" before breaking into a jazz piano ending. In anyone else's hands, this would sound clumsy and awkward, in Sting's it all sounds natural.

That's not to say that Sting is playing loose. The sound of the album is meticulous as usual, with the players all being good soldiers and filling out their places on the album in precise fashion. Even the rap in "Perfect Love Gone Wrong" sounds like it was laid in place by architects. But that's what our man Sting has always been about. Think about how serious his "On A Winter's Night" is, and that's his Holiday album. "Brand New Day" was more of that perfect plans of mice and men laid down with impeccable skill, with the good fortune of have Sting and a batch of good singing and playing to match the songs.




This entry was originally posted at http://www.dreamwidth.org/12345.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

The Summoner Calls
5 Out of 5 Stars

In ye merry olde England, if you were about to be charged with a crime, the law of the day would pay someone to come and fetch you. That person, the Summoner, would be paid for his duty, but as the story goes, could also be paid to look the other way if the object of his attention made a generous counter offer. Such is the case with Sting, who wants to have it both ways. He wants your attention on "Ten Summoner's Tales," intriguing you in ten different ways before offering an epilogue at the end. He's eager to please this time, putting aside the morose but intriguing jazz fusion that his previous three albums had for a more pop approach.

From the first single, the Gospelish "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You," the change is apparent. Sting laments a world where politicians "all look like game show hosts to me" (funny how that still seems true) over a poppy hook and a snappy bass line. Then story time takes over with "Love Is Stronger Than Justice," a pedal-steel inflected story of bandits, and then the tale of the longing that is "Fields Of Gold." maybe one of my all time favorite Sting songs, it drifts across a Spanish guitar and is one of his loveliest ballads.

There are a few attempts at humor, like the dialogue during "St Augustine In Hell," where a special circle is left open for music critics, or the "Epilogue (Nothing About Me)," where he can't help but taunt that, after ten songs about assorted characters, you don't know who the teller of the stories really is. The songs range form poppy to enigmatic ("Something The Boy Said"), yet the man himself remains a cipher till the very end. Seeing as his last couple of albums were such personal affairs, the looser feel of "Ten Summoners Tales" and its songs from outside the sphere may make this Sting's most accessible album. Back in 1993 when I was still writing for a major trade paper, this was one of my faves of that year. Still is.



This entry was originally posted at http://www.dreamwidth.org/12345.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Oh my goodness, Tori has become Kate Bush
4 Out Of 5 Stars

When listening to Tori Amos' new album, "Night of Hunters," it is helpful to remember that Tori was a conservatory trained musician. And she's always loved to conceptualize her music; starting with "Boys For Pele" in 1996. So it shouldn't come as a suprise that when the classical recording label Deutsche Grammophon offered her a commission to write a song cycle based on classical works, she jumped at it. "Night Of Hunters," which chronicles a woman dealing with the end of a relationship, is an excellent summation of Tori's talents as both musician and composer.

Back when I first received a copy of "Y Kant Tori Read," I remember telling friends I thought Tori was going to be the American Kate Bush. "Little Earthquakes" solidified that opinion for me, but I never thought Tori went all the way into Kate's musical extravagance until this album. Much of "Hunter" recalls Bush's "Aerial," especially the "Sky Full of Honey" suite that is that album's second disc. Filled with lush romantic orchestration and Tori's usual literate lyrics, "Hunter" contains emotional tensions that Tori last explored on "Scarlett's Walk" in 2002.

In the same vein as "Scarlett's Walk" and its themes of a journey through womanhood, "Hunter" takes a particular moment of womanhood and tries to dissect it. As well as a difficult one. Tori needed a foil to try and help her character deal with the loss of love and image, for which we are introduced to her daughter Natasha as "Annabelle The Fox." But what "Hunter" does not do is bow to pop conventions. This is strictly a classical record and there aren't nods to hip-hop (as they did on "Abnormally Attracted to Sin's" opener, "Give") or standard pop instrumentation.

Indeed, only "Cactus Practice" or "Carry" contain what one would conventionally call a 'hook,' and when Tori and her daughter trade lines on "Job's Coffin," you might be slightly tempted to attempt singing along. But to return to my earlier Kate Bush analogy, "Night Of Hunters" is not an easy listen as much as it is an unfolding one. It's also a strong return to the Tori that amazed us 20 years ago on "Little Earthquakes."

Thanks to Amazon reviewer T.Fisher: here are the sources for Tori's songs on "Night Of The Hunter."

1. Shattering Sea (Alkan: Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore, Prelude op. 31 no. 8)
2. SnowBlind (Granados: Añoranza - from 6 Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)
3. Battle of Trees (Satie: Gnossienne no. 1)
4. Fearlessness (Granados: Orientale from 12 Spanish Dances)
5. Cactus Practice (Chopin: Nocturne op. 9 no. 1)
6. Star Whisperer (Schubert: Andantino from Piano Sonata in A major D 959)
7. Job's Coffin (Inspired by the next song, Nautical Twilight)
8. Nautical Twilight (Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song from Songs Without Words op. 30)
9. Your Ghost (Schumann: Theme and Variations in E flat major WoO 24 from Ghost Variations)
10. Edge of the Moon (Bach: Siciliano from Flute Sonata BWV 1031)
11. The Chase (Mussorgsky: The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition)
12. Night of Hunters (Scarlatti: Sonata in F minor, K.466 and the Gregorian Chant "Salva Regina")
13. Seven Sisters (Bach: Prelude in C minor)
14. Carry (Debussy: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, from Preludes I)

Set Yourself Free
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Sting is one of those restless creatures of creativity. How does one keep yourself relevant in your own mind when your youthful blurts made you rich? Sting has reinvented himself at least three times; first as the spiky haired lead singer of The Police, then as the jazz-inflected solo artist, and here as the man for all seasons, playing both his old and new material in a setting almost too casual for its own good. Surprisingly enough, it works.

Recorded in Italy on September 11, 2001 on the "Brand New Day" tour and during a period of re-emergence, Sting sounds loose and relaxed. Several of the songs are given a medley treatment, but the playing never falters into camp or awkwardness during the transitions. It's also exquisitely mixed and recorded. Now granted, this is certainly for us middle-agers who have since lost our own frenetic metabolism and can settle for pleasantry in what used to be our rebellions. "All This Time" does just that.