Sacred Love: 2003/05

Sting shows poor judgment...

There is a saying about those with bad beer sense that where the booze goes, the judgment goes out. Who knows if that doesn't also apply to rock millionaires. With money.

Sting can, as most people know, wallpaper the walls with thousands of shillings. Several times a day for several years. And during his concert in front of a packed audience in Scandinavium, he shows poor judgment and bad decisions. The latest albums' exploration of world music and jazzy funk mumbo-jumbo is pretty useless even live. But above all, the poor judgment is not primarily about him and his songs but about his band.

During large parts of the 1.45-hour long concert, the fun hour is at the music academy and of course everyone involved is incredibly skilled at handling their instruments. Something they show not least during a long section of solos where the piano solo is a bit of a horse's back. I buy that straight away, a song where the musicians get to show off on a tightrope is completely okay. Especially since the song itself is so pointless that it doesn't lose anything from it.

It gets worse when these highly trained musicians have to play the same way all the time. A really good musician will never be good enough if he can't be nuanced. Take the drummer for example. A rock-hard, whipping beat machine, completely devoid of emotion. Hearing him try to play backbeat in the exquisite 'Englishman in New York' and stiffly, almost lobotomisingly, pounding his way through the verses on the normally cruelly sensitive Every breath you take is pure and utter terror to the ears.

That was just one example among many, I could pick many more but I'll just say that by hiring these gnomes, Sting is doing himself a disservice.

He himself is, as usual, good. Sings perfectly all evening and, with little effort, has an excellent hand with the audience, who wake up after three quarters of an hour.

In addition, he does the songs that the band doesn't like to play in parts absolutely superbly. The middle section with 'Fragile' and 'Fields of Gold' is quiet and nice, 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' lifts and if it weren't for the fact that towards the end he completely slaughters 'Roxanne' in a saucy and funk rock version, the third place would probably have been there.

(c) Göteborg Post by Daniel Claeson