The freshest and most immediate album of Sting’s solo career

Sting on November 11, 2016 he released the album entitled “57th & 9th”a record that took its name from an intersection of streets that the English musician crossed every day to go to the recording studio. It marked his return to rock after decades. At the time, speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, he declared: “The new work is the rockiest thing I’ve done in a long time. The album will include all my influences, but above all it will be very energetic. I’m very happy and I want to see how it goes.” What you read below is our review of the album.

The “return to rock” is a story we often hear in music. But “57th & 9th”, the new album of unreleased songs by the former Police leader, is not just this. And it’s not even the “return to the Police”, as you might think listening to the single “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You”, which refers to that world. It’s much more, and it’s a different story.

Few careers have been as eclectic and, in some ways, dispersive as Sting’s solo career. At first he incorporated his passions and influences outside of pop-rock into the song form and his music. “Bring on the night”, the live album from 1986, is perhaps the best thing from the beginning of his career, for the wonderful fusion between rock and jazz, the instrumental mastery, but never without losing sight of the songs. Then, in the new millennium: madrigals, symphony albums, musicals dedicated to the naval industry, and so on. And so, so much boredom.

In between, for a few years, the live rediscovery of the old sound, with the tour with Paul Simon and alone. And finally this album, which is the sequel to “Sacred love”, from 2003, the last album of songs. Theoretically, in form. Because Sting, as a soloist, has never made a record so straight and guitar-driven. Of course, the first single is ‘Police revisited’, and also the guitar that opens “Down down down”. But the most striking are the riffs of “50.000” – a song about the mortality of rock stars, “Another of our comrades taken down/We create the gods we kill (…) Rockstar don’t ever die, they only fade away “, released on the day of Cohen’s death – the even straighter one of “Petrol head”, or the arpeggio of “Pretty Young Soldier”.

Then, of course, Sting gives in to old passions: “Heading South On The Great North Road” seems to come out of “The Last Ship”. “Inshallah” is the heir to “Desert rose”, “The empty chair” seems to have been written by his friend Paul Simon. But the end result is that “57th & 9th” is the freshest, most immediate album of Sting’s solo career. It’s a pleasure to listen, and it’s a pleasure to hear that voice and that pen deal with what we knew and loved her for. Welcome back. Finally.