STING RISES AGAIN WITH MERCURY FALLING

March, 1996 - Addicted To Noise

by Beth Winegarner

"I put the Merc in neutral and cramped the wheels to the left. Big Red and I put our shoulders to it, a few good grunts at first, and then she was rolling on her own weight. When the front tires dropped over the edge, the back end flipped up, but rather than nosing straight down it dragged on the frame and tilted sideways slow enough for us to hear all the cans sluicing towards the driver's side, and then she cleared the edge and was gone. The earth suddenly seemed lighter. It was silent so long I figured we hadn't heard the hit, that the sound of the impact h as been muffled by the surge and batter of the waves below, and I was just about to peer over the edge when it smashed on the rocks KAAABBBBLLLAAAAAAM." --Jim Dodge, Not Fade Away

Mercury. It is the closest planet to the sun, small and hot and barren. It is liquid metal, slippery and unpredictable, deadly if swallowed. Sting's latest album takes its name from its opening and closing lines, "mercury falling." When the mercury dro ps, it's a cold day on earth, but when a planet falls into the sun, it dies in a blaze of fire. This latest work by the former Police frontman is a bit like that; now hot, now cold. Mercurial.

Sting has explored many musical styles through his years in the music business, but never has his own work been so multilayered. On Mercury Falling, he draws inspiration from many cultures, time periods, themes and genres. "I'm interested in im pure music," he recently told Time magazine. "Pure rock, pure jazz or pure anything doesn't interest me. This is the game I play."

With these images in mind, it shouldn't surprise listeners to discover that Sting features new noises like steel-guitar country blended with upbeat melancholy pop on "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying," a melodic song about the silver linings in divorce and joint child custody, or in the closing track, "Lithium Sunset," in which the narrator looks to the dying sunlight for comfort.

"Valparaiso," a somber seafaring muse, is flavored with Celtic Northumbrian pipes played by Kathryn Tickell. And the first single, "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," is a gospel-sweetened ode to hopefulness and the power of personal intuition. With his usua l wisdom and wit, Sting manages to blend these exotic noises into his own suave musical sensibilities, letting them change his direction without compromising his own style.

"Silent, eyes closed, Big Red didn't twitch from his reverie until we were coming back across the Golden Gate... so when he finally opened his eyes and asked, 'Did you hear it,' I was a little cross. 'Hear what? The waves? The wind? The wreck?'

'No man, the silence. The gravitational mass of that silence. And then that great, brief, twisted cry of metal.' 'That sound isn't high on my hit parade, Red. I like cars... It'd be like throwing your horn over the cliff.'

'Yes! He grabbed my shoulder, 'Exactly!'" --Dodge

As always, Sting's songwriting and storytelling is impeccable. The title track reunites us with our old friend, the rumpled and genteel master of romance and longing. "It seems now that she's gone/ And somehow I am pinned by/ The hounds of winter/ Howling in the wind," he sings as a slow, swirling, jazzy melody ste ps along behind him. Towards the end of the song, his own voice mimics the hoarse, eerie, gorgeous howl of the hounds.

"I Hung My Head" muses on the dangers of irresponsible gun use when a man is accidentally shot and the perpetrator is sentenced to a hanging. The final verse turns the song's chorus on its head: "Early one morning, with time to kill/ I see the gallows up on the hill... I pay for God's mercy, for soon I'll be dead/ I hung my head." Sting's subtle humor returns in "All Four Seasons" as his character laments the incurable moodiness of his significant other. "Watching the weatherman's been no good at all," he gripes. "She can be all four seasons in one day."

In another paean to confusing women, "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets" is an all-French samba dedicated to the way amour can leave a man with "two left feet" and "searching in vain for the words to explain your life to me." His French -- both in accent and in lyric -- is lovely and simple, but unilingual listener s will have to dig up their translation dictionaries to puzzle out some of the metaphors.

In "I Was Brought To My Senses," Sting sings a gentle intro accented by understated acoustic guitar and fiddle, then launches into a lush, syncopated and joyful melody that backdrops the realization of the love in his life: "For the first time I saw the work of heaven/In the line where the hills had been married to the sky/And all around my every blade of singing grass/Was calling out your name/And that our love would always last."

The music on Mercury Falling, for all its odds and ends, is incredibly coherent as a blend of styles, talents and emotions. Sting's own tenor is still charming and approachable after all these years. He is joined by Dominic Miller on guitars, Kenny Kirkland on keyboards, and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums. Each instrument has its balance and equality, seamlessly combining all the elements their mercurial singer has brought to this album. In addition, Branford Marsalis appears on a couple of tracks, bringing in his graceful saxophone without stealing the show.

"Right before dawn Big Red took the bandstand alone and announced he was going to play a new composition called 'Mercury Falling.,' and that he wanted to dedicate it to me on my birthday... For the twenty minutes Big Red played, there wasn't a heartbeat in the room. Cigarets went out. Ice melted in drinks. I know it's hopeless to try and describe music, but he played that silence he'd heard, heard so clearly, brought every note through it and to it, pushed them over the edge into the massive suck of gravity, hung them in the wind and hurled them gladly to the surging bash and wash of water wearing down stone, every note smashing on the claim of silence was a newborn crying at the light. When he finished there wasn't a sound and there wasn't a silence and we all took our first breath together." --Dodge

There's only one thing missing on this and other recent Sting works, and that's the political leanings which dappled "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" and "Nothing Like the Sun." Some say "I Hung My Head" is an argument for gun control, and "I'm So Happy..." may be a suggestion that divorced fathers have a right to spend time with their children. But it's hard to guess if he's abandoned the radical notions of the mid-eighties for sublime storytelling of a different kind, or if he's decided the best way to get his message across is through songs of a more personal nature.

Many of the stories find Sting searching the stars for inspiration. "Chase the dog star/ Over the sea," opens "Valparaiso," and "We'd be like the moon and the sun" describes the romance in "Senses." But the bridge of "I'm So Happy..." ponders the universe at its most breathtaking and most intimate. "I looked up at the stars/ To try and find an answer to my life/ I chose a star for me, I chose a star for him/I chose two stars for my kids and one star for my wife," he sings, wistfulness in his voice. "Something made me smile/ Something seemed to ease the pain/ Someth ing about the universe and how it's all connected."

On Mercury Falling, Sting brings together universal images and themes, international sounds and voices, humor and sadness and faith, melding them together to create what is a new, yet eternal and familiar sound. And though he continues to be a steady star in the musical heavens, he still manages to remind us of our -- and his own -- humanity through his tenderness and passion for music.

This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise.