Sting seemed nearly invincible in the late 80s. His acclaimed debut album, 1985's The Dream Of The Blue Turtles, proved he could thrive outside of The Police, while 1987’s diverse, hit-packed … Nothing Like The Sun yielded a Brit Award, Grammy nominations, and multi-platinum sales. As the decade drew to a close, however, a personal tragedy suddenly befell the artist, and would inform the content of his third solo release, The Soul Cages. Sting commented: My father died in 1987. We'd had a difficult relationship and his death hit me harder than I'd imagined possible.
The Soul Cages was a concept album focused on the death of Sting's father. Sting had developed a writer's block shortly after his father's death in 1987; the episode lasted several years, until he was able to overcome his affliction by dealing with the death of his father through music. Most of the songs have motifs related to sailing or the seas; Sting wrote in his autobiography, Broken Music, that his father had always regretted not becoming a sailor. There are also references to Newcastle, the part of England where Sting grew up.
Given his experience of writer's block, Sting did not have any finished songs or arrangements upon entering the studio, unlike previous albums. After two weeks of rehearsing his existing song ideas with his line-up of musicians – Dominic Miller on guitar, Kenny Kirkland on keyboards and Manu Katché on drums – together they moulded these ideas into proper songs in the studio, either through arranging them or recording jams that could be edited into a song. They spent six weeks doing the basic tracks at Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris, before hiring the Le Voyageur II mobile studio for overdubs and vocals in Villa Salviati in Migliarino, Italy.
The Soul Cages grew out of the death of Sting's father, who had always wanted to be a sailor. His son became a jet-setting Rock star, and the father had to watch the shipping industry in his town slowly die around him, robbing him of even vicarious pleasures. On "Soul Cages" Sting shaped ship and sailing motifs into a concept album about loss.
The album opened with "Island of Souls" about a boy named Billy whose shipbuilder father gets injured in a workplace accident and has three weeks to live. Then the hit and most-well known tune of the record "All This Time" Billy takes the father out to sea, so that he may finish his life and be buried in the ocean. The son mourned his father in the album's most beautiful song, "Why Should I Cry for You." Then, after being lost at sea in "The Wild, Wild Sea" Billy ends up intercepted by some kind of demon sea king who traps the father's spirit in "The Soul Cages". Sting was a high school English teacher before he became a Rock star, which may be why he can't quite just come out and say he misses his Dad.
The whole nautical motif of "The Soul Cages" doesn't really have much impact at the time for many people, unless you too had a father who always wanted to be a sailor. The meaning of getting your soul trapped in a cage and needing your son to release it so you can be at peace, gets lost unless you study the lyric sheet. Half the tracks advance a story, if you're paying attention, but feel more like well decorated waiting rooms than songs. This is very controlled, refined music with hints of Rock, contemporary Jazz, and Spanish guitar. If that sounds like a wine description, that’s about right. It’s definitely not for kids or anyone who needs things to rock for an album to be legitimate.
Yet, while The Soul Cages was certainly an immersive listen, intensely personal songs such as “Why Should I Cry For You?,” the haunting “The Wild, Wild Sea” and the elegiac “When The Angels Fall” were leavened by the presence of tracks with a notably keener rock and pop edge. Taken as a whole, The Soul Cages was an immensely satisfying listen, as reflected in the overwhelmingly positive reviews that greeted its UK release, A critic on the Boston Globe declared the essence of the record, "Sting has fashioned a well-balanced, highly insightful record that functions as a musical diary of the heart."
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario