Label: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (US), UDCD 528
Style: Rock, Pop, Ska, Reggae
Country: Wallsend, England (2 October 1951)
Time: 41:45
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 254 Mb
Charts:
UK #3, AUS #1, AUT #13, FRA #4, GER #4, NLD #1, NOR #4, SWE #5, SWI #6,
US #2. France & Germany: Platinum; UK: 2x Platinum; US: 3x
Platinum.
With the Police on hiatus, Sting had choices galore for
ways to make his inevitable solo album. The most obvious was to become
the world’s bestqualified Police imitator; what he did instead smacks of
brilliantly enlightened self-interest.
Der Stingle chose to form a
new band with young jazz hotshots from Weather Report (drummer Omar
Hakim) and the Miles Davis group (bassist Darryl Jones), plus
saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland. These
aren’t the usual sleepy gang of veteran sidemen; they never bothered to
learn pop-jazz cliches, but they know their Jimi Hendrix, Chic, Herbie
Hancock and Led Zeppelin, along with their Duke Ellington.
Unlike
Joni Mitchell, another Big Blond Star who attempted this kind of
jazzification, Sting can swing. You can hear how much fun he’s having,
and how much goosing he gets from the band, in the remake of the
Police’s "Shadows in the Rain." The spooky, dubwise reggae tune from
Zenyatta Mondatta now steams along like a workout by soul-jazz organist
Jimmy Smith. Kirkland pumps out organ chords over Hakim’s stomp, while
Sting and Marsalis dodge each others’ syncopations around the bass line.
But
except for "Shadows," the bluesy "Consider Me Gone" and an
instrumental, "Blue Turtles," that grafts progressive 1960s jazz onto a
Weather Reporty march, The Dream of the Blue Turtles is a pop record
above all. It’s only a jam session between the lines, where Marsalis
answers Sting’s voice with slyly ubiquitous fanfares and curlicues and
epigrams.
Sting still writes short, modal melody lines, and sometimes
he plays around with the Police’s quiet marches (a la "King of Pain")
and Afro-Anglo-Caribbean rhythms - to do anything else would be like
changing his fingerprints. But if you listen to the way verses and
phrases end, there are new twists, surprising extended chords by way of
Steely Dan, Weather Report and Ellington. Although Sting is working with
world-class improvisers, many of his new band’s arrangements are more
structured than tracks by the Police. That amazing trio could juggle
rhythm and lead roles like nobody’s business, while a quintet that tried
the same openness would find itself in chaos. The new band is also
punchier than the Police, because Kirkland’s keyboards - especially the
organ - reinforce the rhythm, and the Hakim-Jones team packs a mighty
wallop.
Solo albums are traditionally variety shows and statements of
purpose, and The Dream of the Blue Turtles is a little of both. Sting
delves into neovaudeville with "Moon over Bourbon Street" and serioso
classical hymnology with "Russians," a disarmament song. He also
comments on the British miners’ strike ("We Work the Black Seam"), on
lost generations ("Children’s Crusade") and on matters philosophical and
epistemological ("Love Is the Seventh Wave" and "If You Love Somebody
Set Them Free").
When I saw the band in concert (as you should when
it tours this summer), its musical exuberance was contagious: I kept
losing track of the lyrics in the brainy kicks of the music. On record,
things are a little more sober - and, to my taste, too earnest.
It
was easy to see it coming. Sting has been driven to tears by world
problems since the Police’s third-world tour. Yet I’d suspect that the
rest of the band edited his pronouncements for commercial zoning;
without them, he does tend to go on about "All the bloodshed all the
anger/All the weapons all the greed/All the armies all the missiles/All
the symbols of our fear," as he does on "Love Is the Seventh Wave."
"Children’s
Crusade" makes a rather tenuous connection between soldiers in World
War I and young drug users. "We Work the Black Seam" - with a winding
melody that suggests climbing and descending and with a rhythm track
like the clang of picks - extrapolates from neat denunciations of
Thatcherism ("We matter more than pounds and pence/Your economic theory
makes no sense") and nuclear power ("Bury the waste in a great big
hole") to goofy stuff about the universe. Sting acts worried about
carbon 14, which must be easier to rhyme than plutonium.
I’m all for
political songs, and there’s no better vehicle for them than a megastar
album. Yet Sting sabotages his own good intentions when he gets preachy
or spacey or sanctimonious. "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" is a
postgrammatical, T-shirt sentiment and a denunciation of possessiveness
that would be a lot more convincing issued by someone other than a
millionaire. If Sting really believes that we can be happy with less, he
can send me $500,000, care of this magazine.
So dump the lyric sheet
and enjoy the tunes: the transparency of "We Work the Black Seam," the
way "Children’s Crusade" slowly spirals to its climax, the Caribbean
lilt of "Love Is the Seventh Wave," the impassioned singing on "If You
Love Somebody Set Them Free" and the delicate-to-martial dynamics of
"Fortress around Your Heart," which evokes Pete Townshend and Steely
Dan, along with the Police. Sting the musician has more to say than
Sting the deep thinker - especially when he’s paced, and pushed, by
extraordinary young musicians.
(rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/the-dream-of-the-blue-turtles-190421/) Review by Jon Pareles. June 17, 1997
01. If You Love Somebody Set Them Free (04:19)
02. Love Is The Seventh Wave (03:32)
03. Russians (03:57)
04. Children's Crusade (05:02)
05. Shadows In The Rain (04:50)
06. We Work The Black Seam (05:41)
07. Consider Me Gone (04:20)
08. The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (01:18)
09. Moon Over Bourbon Street (04:00)
10. Fortress Around Your Heart (04:42)
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