Sting "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" A&M Records
Sting is not what you would call an endearing person, not someone whose miscalculations you could easily indulge. He is, after all, ruthlessly talented, and always seems to be dancing on a narrow beam between pop brilliance and slick self-importance. Still, his output in the past with the Police has been tolerable, who am I kidding, addictive, because in general he has stuck to the topics that he, always the lonely enigma, seemed to know best. Alienation, pain, despair, not novel lyrical subjects, but somehow locked more firmly into perspective after Sting's alternately carefree and bitter treatment. Somewhere along the line, though, he set himself up as a spokesman for the downtrodden, a peruser of history's great ironies. He certainly has the knowledge to broach such subjects, far be it from me to challenge him at a cocktail party, but to put them to music, and not earthy, passionate music but his own shiny hybrid of trad jazz and pop, exudes condescension. Not all of the songs on his newly released solo effort, "The Dream of the Blue Turtle,' fall victim to this snare, however. "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,' the first single off the album is a counterpiece to the vastly more memorable "Every Breath You Take' off "Synchronicity.' Apparently, Sting has learned to let go, and although the song offers little advice that Grandpa Walton didn't point out years ago, it's a pleasant arrangement, a catchy tune that grows on you despite better judgment. Personal entanglements are better served in "Fortress Around Your Heart,' a poetic metaphor for a ruined relationship. "While the armies are all sleeping/Beneath the tattered flag we'd made/I had to stop in my tracks for fear/Of walking on the mines I'd laid.' While it is true that Sting tends to be aggressively proud of his potential for evil ("I've destroyed one person completely,' he said matter-of-factly to interviewer Vic Garbarini), this confessional rings truer than most. But it is the political manifestos on the album that still irritate. "Russians' is a dry piece of grade-school philosophizing ("We share the same biology/Regardless of ideology'). And "We Work the Black Seam,' a completely gratuitous use of the second person in which Sting breaks bread with coal miners, makes me want to slap him and tell him to stop trying to be a polished, mainstream U2. "Children's Crusade' deserves mention as a beautiful song that fares better at dealing with a topic like war, except that it seems far too intentional; a vision of Sting embracing a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary comes to mind. On the whole, the band's sound is calculated, polished _ if not particularly inspired. The jazz musicians that back Sting leave no doubt as to their virtuosity, only to their warmth. Only on the reggae-inspired "Love Is the Seventh Wave,' a song that seems to belong on side two of "Ghost in the Machine,' does it all sound like spontaneous fun. And Sting is not afraid to fade out with a parody of himself: "Every cake you bake ... every leg you break ...' Maybe he knows more than he's telling.
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