Sacred Love: 2003/05

Sting & Lennox worth the wait...

''So, what was that hurricane's name?'' Sting queried the dancing, sing-alonging throng packed into Sound Advice Amphitheatre Thursday night.

''Frances!'' someone chimed helpfully.

''That's the same name as my ex-wife,'' the long, cool, fetchingly shaggy-haired singer/bassist/tantric love god quipped.

Ah, that Sting. So clever. So sexy, talented and obviously beloved by the ebullient fans that gathered for Thursday's makeup appearance by him and Annie Lennox. The first, of course, had been postponed on account of that pesky Frances. But the soulful, skilful stylings of both singers and their backing musicians made it more than worth the wait.

After a short set by Sting's guitarist, Dominic Miller, Lennox took the stage and immediately commanded it. Most of her hour-long set was made up of songs from her earlier albums, as well as her career with the Eurythmics. In a far cry from her '80s androgynous look, the lean, lithe Lennox, who turns 50 on Christmas Day, vamped it up in a tight red tank top and low-slung jeans.

She wrapped her amazing vocal range around Bob Marley's silky 'Wait in Vain', wailed like a wayward gospel diva on 'Missionary Man' and slammed a blistering 'Sweet Dreams' into the stratosphere.

An hour wasn't enough for Annie, although she did make a brief reappearance during Sting's set, threatening to steal his hit 'We'll Be Together' right from out of his yoga-toned arms.

Although this show is a continuation of his 'Sacred Love' tour, which hit these parts at Miami's Knight Centre earlier this year, this version finds the former Police lead man in a looser, funkier place.

Maybe this is his stadium shtick. After kicking off with a percussion-heavy 'Send Your Love', from his latest album, he swung into the Police's 'Synchronicity II', leaping into the air like the snarky '80s punk he once was.

Sting's strengths in concert are many - his expert musicianship and the way he surrounds himself with equally fine musicians and singers (particularly rafter-shaking singer Joy Rose), as well as his charisma.

Although shows with dual headliners always mean that each performer has to leave out some favourites, I can't imagine what could have made this better - except for maybe if they'd sung more songs together. Oooh. I smell a sequel.

(c) The Palm Beach Post by Leslie Gray Streeter

Sting and Lennox peel gild coat off their venture...

A tour uniting Sting and Annie Lennox can't help but give off an air of impeccable good taste. Two well-aged veterans of British rock, one bearing a royal title, is the sort of double bill devised for benefit concerts or other endeavours that make the music industry appear enlightened.

But the newly titled Sting and especially Lennox did their part on Thursday night to peel the gilded coating off their joint enterprise. Playing at Sound Advice Amphitheatre west of West Palm Beach, the two played generally outgoing and unpretentious sets for an engaged crowd of 11,350.

They also joined voices: Lennox, the opener, sauntered back on stage during the first funky chorus of Sting's Together, and traded verses with her touring mate. The duet added a shot of distaff power and playfulness to the song's erotic bounce.

Sting, not known for suffering musical equals since he quit The Police, looked spry and loosened-up in Lennox's company. As she walked off, he grinned and said in mock-disbelief, "I get paid for this!"

He and his band had lots of money tunes to call on-those VH1-friendly, adult-pop numbers he has embraced in middle age and a few Police standards. The band took the basic scheme of 'Roxanne' - succinct reggae - and teased it out into a lengthy, dreamy meditation that could have been a Lee Perry dub version.

But this touring band was built more for the pop polish of solo sting songs including the moody songs 'Fragile' and 'Fields of Gold', and the discrete reggae of 'Englishman in New York'. Sting insisted on playing 'Sacred Love', title track of his underwhelming latest album, but the watery jazz arrangement was about as sensuous as an MRI exam. He was better off using his songs to show off the musicianship on stage and turn them into spirited, improvisational jams.

It's not a stretch to say this bill of peroxide beauties could have switched poles and come off better. Lennox, as the open- er, sang with startling clarity and soul, and routinely brought the crowd out of its seats with that combination of elements that makes her impossible not to watch: raffish elegance and quiet mystery.

'Broken Glass' sounded as buoyant as the day it was recorded. 'Missionary Man', one of her hits with the Eurythmics, lost some of its imposing power because Lennox's own seven- piece band played it too fast to really put across the song's stomping rhythm.

But closing with inspired, emotional versions of the Eurythmics' synthetically gorgeous 'Sweet Dreams' and the pearly solo ballad 'Why', Lennox made it harder for Sting to follow than he probably would have liked.

(c) South Florida Sun Sentinel by Sean Piccoli