This week I’ve been listening to “Sacred Love”, Sting’s new album. While most times, new work by familiar artists takes me some time to grow into, this almum immediately has struck my fancy. It has a lot of stuff on it that is very recognizably Sting, along with some interesting new experimentation.

My favorite track, hands down, is “Stolen Car (Take me dancing)”. In this short song, he paints a picture of three people – well, four, I suppose, but one (the owner of the car) of them doesn’t really count – tied together by a stolen car. Each of them says the same words, but we get very different picture of each. It’s the kind of short story I like – one that is economic in words, and leaves you to fill in a lot of the details yourself.

Another track that is very appealing is “Inside”, the opening track. Unfortunately, the ending feels very contrived. He does the “rhyming words that end in ‘ate’ trick” for the last 20 seconds of this song for no particular reason. This has been done, even with the same words, in a number of other songs, and this kinda ruins the track for me.

I’ve looked at several other reviews, and most of them don’t seem to care much for the album as a cohesive unit, and I think I agree with that somewhat. There’s no unity. There are some great tracks. And, indeed, I find myself playing tracks 1 (Inside) and 6 (Stolen Car) repeatedly, while ignoring a lot of the rest of the album.

So, did I contradict myself there? Maybe a little. For you Sting fans, it’s worth picking up.