If you want to hear the singles from Sting's new album, Mercury Falling, you'll have to tune into a light rock station.
The pieces on the new work don't have the guts that made earlier Sting records acceptable in alternative rock outlets. But that doesn't mean Sting has suddenly slipped to the musical or intellectual level of Mariah Carey or Billy Joel.
In his bluesy new work, Sting still sings some lines that haven't grown trite and he still plays in complex time signatures. Catchy melodies still work their way through the rich textures of his compositions. Some of the new songs are destined to become shower-singing classics in the tradition of "Roxanne" and "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You." And, as he did in his previous two albums especially - The Soul Cages in 1991 and Ten Summoner's Tales in 1993 - Sting has moments of introspection.
On the new album, Sting works without the heaps of lyrical literary allusions that are common to the work of an artist whose album titles have included a line from a Shakespeare sonnet (Nothing Like the Sun) and a play on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Ten Summoner's Tales).
In the masterful The Soul Cages, Sting intellectualizes his emotions about his father's death. On the new work, he sings about love and loss and growing older in simpler terms. Sometimes the newfound simplicity - a departure from what could be labeled pretension in other works - slips into clichés.
The Sting of Dream of the Blue Turtles would not have said "Winter, spring, summer, I'm bound for a fall/ There are no long-term predictions for my baby/ She can be all four seasons on one day" as he does on the Huey Lewis sound-alike "All Four Seasons."
There are clearly songs here that are not clichés, including "I Hung My Head," a song in 5/4 time about a man who accidentally kills someone. The song, about pain and shame is one of the strongest on the album and one that's psychologically challenging.
Instrumentation in the new work is sometimes sparse compared to the lush ensembles he's often used in the past. In Mercury Falling, Sting plays with a four-piece rock and roll band augmented with the East London Gospel Choir, a Hammond organ and a few other sessions players and the Memphis Horns - a talented saxophone trumpet duo that plays with many light rock favorites, such as Don Henley.
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, a collaborator with Sting for over a decade, adds licks to several songs. Instead of being integrated into the texture of the music, Marsalis here plays countermelodies a bit reminiscent of another light rock star, Kenny G. This is true especially on the romantic third track "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" - a song with the sort of philosophy an artist as able as Sting could express with more subtlety.
The ambiance the band creates on Mercury Falling is a new one. Sting's calypso inspiration is less apparent than on older albums. It's been replaced by American musical roots with blues and country influences. There's a sort of sultry nightclub feel on a few songs - probably the album's best spots, such as "I Hung My Head."
While the songs aren't full of the interpretation that some other Sting songs have been, he builds interesting characters in a few of them. Despite its trite title, "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying" is a first-person portrait of a man going through a divorce and custody battle. The song is reminiscent of Lyle Lovett's songs, both for the story and the country twang.
Mercury Falling is a consciously mature work, unlike the bathroom joke-filled Ten Summoner's Tales. The final song, "Lithium Sunset," sounds like Jackson Browne. It closes with the line that opens the album, "Mercury Falling."
Sting presents himself in the new album as an man who's growing old and wise. Previously, he's been an ironic rock star, the creator of a new kind of swing, a scholarly musician, a soul-searcher and a jester.
In "Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)," the last - and 11th - song on his previous full studio work, Ten Summoner's Tales, Sting tells listeners that they do not and cannot know him, even after all he's said.
Naturally, after setting the stage for his new works with a postmodern conception of knowledge fresh in his listeners' heads, he continues to reveal himself in the new work.
Unfortunately, what he reveals is something we've heard before on the light rock station.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 124, Number 19; April 5, 1996
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