Brand New Day: 1999/01

A rock veteran's sure-fire evening - The weather was cold but Sting's old hits warmed us up...

Sting at Helsinki's Finnair Stadium on Tuesday.

Sting's position in the world's pop sky is not as self-evident today as it was five years ago. His last two albums have not had any big hits, and they haven't sold quite as well either. The Englishman's popularity in Finland is stable, and he has visited here more often than many other big names. There seemed to be a couple of thousand empty seats left at Finnair Stadium, but there was still enough enthusiastic audience.

Like any stadium concert, Sting's performance made us wonder if there are any other than financial justifications for playing in such large arenas. Everything is fine in front of the stage, but the events are transmitted to the back of the stands in a very different way. The view and the sound image conflict due to the slowness of the sound, and so the back of the audience sees the events on stage before they hear them. The power of the music also manages to disappear into the heavens, and the conversations around it stand out more clearly than the music.

Although Sting's concert involved battling the cold and rain in addition to the aforementioned problems, the whole thing was still beautiful. This also shows how much good pop music the man has composed during his career.

The show kicked off with the song 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free', which comes from Sting's best solo album 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles'. The excellent 'Moon Over Bourbon Street' was also heard from the same album.

The song selection was strong overall. The audience reacted the coolest to the five tracks from the latest album, and they were undeniably the most indifferent offerings of the evening. All the other choices were good, and only a couple of times did they jam too much. Sting has sometimes avoided playing his biggest hits, but this time both 'Roxanne' and 'Every Breath You Take' were heard. 'Seven Days' and 'We'll Be Together' also sounded great, although they were never huge hits.

The backing band was most impressive with drummer Manu Katché and trumpeter Chris Botti. Trumpet parts had been arranged quite interestingly, even in songs where they were not originally included. The keyboard players spent a large part of their time creating picturesque backgrounds, which they also succeeded in doing very well.

The concert shed very interesting light on Sting's relationship with the guitar and guitarists. The man became famous in a band whose guitarist Andy Summers was the absolute top of his genre. There was a well-known schism between the gentlemen, and Sting's later line-ups have been marked by the absence of a strong-willed guitarist.

Of course, Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton have been guests on studio albums, but the situation has been different on tours. Dominic Miller, who has been involved in the live band for ten years, is still mostly a negligible, at worst, tasteless player. Especially the melodies in 'Fields Of Gold' he phrased like an amateur.

Sting himself took up the guitar in the second encore, and he pulled off both 'Message In A Bottle' and 'Fragile' much more gracefully than Miller did anything the whole evening.

The maestro's bass playing was also admirably strong throughout the show. Although the man's compositions have been on the quiet side recently, his unique, thumb-accentuating playing style still bites.

Along with 'Message In A Bottle' and 'Fragile', the most touching songs of the evening were 'Mad About You', a longing description taken from the uneven 'The Soul Cages' album.

Judging by the enthusiasm of the audience, it is clear that Sting can arrive in Finland with the certainty of success in the future as well.

(c) Helsingin Sanomat by Tero Valkonen

Sting for a mature audience...

Nearly fifty years old and with over twenty years as a rock star in his luggage one wonders if Sting soon is going to lose his sting. Tuesday night's concert at the football stadium luckily proved the opposite.

Can you love a melancholic preacher with an alternately shrill and nasal voice? Yes, oddly enough you can, at least if his name is Sting, alias Gordon Sumner.

The concert in Helsinki could have turned out a fiasco due to the cool weather and low sound volume. Yet Sting himself managed to save it all with two important efforts. Firstly, it was a really happy Sting who stood on the stage, even if, as usual, it was unnecessary to expect flirting with the audience in the form of cosy small talk. Secondly, Sting had the good taste to sing mainly his fine older hits.

The opening song was a unexpectedly go-ahead version of 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free' from his first solo album 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles' and with that Sting set the tone for the rest of the evening.

I belong to those who were a little bit sceptical beforehand. The album 'Brand New Day', which has given the whole tour its name, really doesn't belong to the best of Sting's productions, but Sting confined himself to playing a handful of songs from it, among others 'After The Rain', 'Fill Her Up' and 'Brand New Day'.

One of the highlights of the evening was however 'Englishman In New York' from the album 'Nothing Like The Sun'. The song is dedicated to one of Sting's friends who at the age of seventy dared to leave England and move to the Bowery in New York.

'Mad About You' and 'Moon Over Bourbon Street' also sounded nice.

And we nostalgians who have The Police's Greatest Hits in our record shelf had no reason to complain. 'Roxanne', 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' and 'Every Breath You Take' lit the audience and 'Message In A Bottle' was performed in an almost acoustic version and with the assistance of devoted fans.

The 'Brand New Day' tour has been going for two years and this was Sting's second visit to Finland during the tour. This autumn, just in time for his fiftieth birthday, the next album is released, and judging by his farewell words to the audience we'll see him here again.

(c) Hufvudstadsbladet by Annika Hallsten/Translated by Jan Alin