Sacred Love: 2003/05

To an unexpected party with Sting...

The otherwise so reserved and correct Briton let both senses and sex into a fine concert that occasionally touched on the sublime. Sting, Forum, Thursday. Four hearts Sound, good sound. Light, lots of light - like a tasteful Christmas decoration. Music, catchy good music with a surprising beat from a disco somewhere down in the middle of Europe. Right from the moment 53-year-old Sting and his sextet swung onto the stage in Forum, the red lights signalled party, December and a mischievous little flirtation with the forbidden. 'Send Your Love', Sting urged in the first song of the set with the unexpected, disco-like rhythm, and when he immediately rocked on into the still cheerful breakthrough hit for The Police, 'Message In A Bottle', it may well be that the sold-out hall in Forum was busy signing off with precisely love.

Of the form that is stomped to the beat by Danish winter boots and slapped out by sweaty palms in excitement that made everyone lift their butts off the boring chairs. Should it still not have dawned on the most December-drowsy people that the former schoolteacher, champion of everything from rainforests to human rights to ecology and what have we, has transformed himself into a regular partygoer, yes, a little laban, Sting revealed several new sides of himself when he reached song number 10. "Here is a song about sex with a little inspiration from Victoria's Secret", said Sting with a salute to his homeland's lingerie industry and launched the band into the title track from the latest album, 'Sacred Love'.

And into the very impressive screens behind the band, which like living picture frames constantly changed format and size, scantily clad girls danced, so vividly that any hussars in a Sting audience would probably have to pinch their arms or chests in excitement. All in all, the decorative play with the visual medium behind Sting set an incredibly high standard for this kind of decoration and was a real pleasure throughout the concert. The same was true of the music, although of course we were not allowed to just party. After all, Sting is still too serious a man to let a concert descend into promiscuity and debauchery just because it is Christmas.

The concert was supposed to be held in May, but then Sting lost his voice and had to ask for the postponement and patience, for which he thanked with fine self-irony in Forum. Where one could be happy that the beautiful, bright vocals have definitely not been damaged. Sting, like a more modest and less grandiose version of Bono, is still an excellent singer, a confident performer and a bassist of a calibre that is often forgotten in the midst of everything else. The bass was greatly helped in Forum by the fact that Sting has changed his regular crew a bit and hired a drummer from Mississippi in the USA, who can really kick a solid, rocking rock'n'roll base under the sometimes a little too cheesy musical gallery.

He often gave the feeling of drive and drive that you have to go all the way back to Stewart Copeland and the Police to experience behind Sting. A composer who has defined his own musical landscape between jazz and rock music with a place for improvisation and a willingness to change that you don't find many other places. Admittedly, Sting paints with a broad brush as a composer, but on stage the colours can be mixed so that new motifs emerge.

In Forum, the evening's warm-up act, Chris Botti, for example, delivered a glowing Miles Davis trumpet to Sting, who rightly looked happy about his contribution. When you both change the setlist drastically and play around with your classics, so that for example 'Roxanna' becomes a poisonous acid queen who spreads her tentacles into all the side streets of music, you have to take your hat off. And when Sting, together with his band and not least one of his chorus girls, tear the otherwise very mundane duet 'Whenever I Say Your Name' up from the ceiling from a boring start and the next moment repeat the feat with 'Never Coming Home', then we have crossed the border into the sublime.

We have been there several times during a concert, which was also embarrassed by slightly uncommitted versions of classics such as 'Fields Of Gold' and by the not too interesting contributions from 'Sacred Love', which Sting insisted on including in an otherwise well-composed setlist. It provided the basis for a well-organized and balanced concert between reflection and celebration for one of rock's best talents, who even limited his political messages to a solid round of community singing along the lines of: "Be yourself, no matter what they say", in 'Englishman in New York'.

It's hard not to agree with that. Just as it's hard not to be enthusiastic about such a sympathetic artist with such good contact with his audience, even if it's placed on 6,500 chairs and really wants to throw a little party.

(c) Politiken by Erik Jensen