STING – “THE BRIDGE” //Polydor// (Released 19th November)

Description

£46.99 – 2xLP, Limited Edition Deluxe Boxset

£30.99 – 2xLP, Indies Exclusive Limited Edition Vinyl

£24.99 – 1xLP, Limited Edition Vinyl

Sting begins each day with a swim. “A religious morning ritual for me,” is how he describes it. “It’s hydrotherapy.”

“There’s a whole lot of water flowing through this album,” he says about the brand new songs that form the body of work he’s christened The Bridge. “All of the songs on the album are bridged by people being between worlds,” the musician continues.

Here, then, is another bridge: as well as pushing elegantly forward, this is an album that intriguingly stretches backwards, showcasing the many different stages and genres through which Sting has journeyed in an unparalleled career. The Bridge feels like a greatest hits, but one where all the songs are brand new. A record that is at once modern and upbeat but rooted in Sting’s lifelong musical and lyrical passions.

As he puts it: “These songs are between one place and another, between one state of mind and another, between life and death, between relationships. Between pandemics, and between eras – politically, socially and psychologically, all of us are in the middle of something. We need a bridge.”

Sting recorded the album over the last year with a coterie of trusted musicians beaming into his studio remotely. That easy sense of musical camaraderie, connection and kinship is on full display in the lead single ‘If It’s Love’, an unabashed pop song lent wings by a whistled refrain, joyful handclaps, and uplifting brass and strings.

Firstly, in March 2020, Sting needed a bridge home. Like the rest of us, the onrushing pandemic necessitated a pause; a retreat to heart and hearth.

“I’ve been travelling the world for years,” Sting says, “so the idea of being in one place for a few months, in the same bed, was strange to me. So, I had to get used to it. And if I’m ever stuck in one place, I sit with my guitar and escape into my head.”

International lockdowns, he continues “allowed me to go into my work. I have a studio, so I would still go to work every day. But I didn’t know when this pandemic would end, whether I’d ever go back on tour again. So, my entire life was now in the studio.”

At the same time, that appealed to an artist who, over the course of selling 100 million albums and touring the world multiple times in a near-five-decade career, has always prized the discipline of working. So, the day after the beginning of his enforced shore leave, Sting got to it. He clocked into his home studio at 10.30 that morning, stayed till evening, and determined to do that every day thereafter.

Even as the songs emerged, it took a while for an album to swim into shape. “I wasn’t hurrying. But for a long time, I had little fragments, and it wasn’t coherent. Until I stood back.”

There was, he realized, a “thread, although I didn’t know this as I was writing it. For many months I was just writing separate songs. And the album as a whole didn’t make much sense. Until one day I started to look at it in a much more global way.”

As this lover of words points out, the meaning of “bridge” contains multitudes. It links things, ideas, cultures, banks of a river. It’s a place you steer a ship from. It’s also a route into the past, and so it was that Sting found himself considering his own foundations – the music and the places that reside within his very DNA.

Further demonstrating his interest in, and mastery of, myriad genres is ‘Loving You’. What Sting describes as the song’s “stark musical setting” of electronic beats and ambient synth washes comes courtesy of Maya Jane Coles, the Anglo-Japanese techno DJ, producer, remixer and engineer. “I added a little bass while Melissa Musique and Gene Noble lent their wonderful vocals, and the story of jealousy and hurt unfolded like a poisoned flower waiting for the sweet waters of reconciliation to rain down.”

Rounding out this kaleidoscope of future-facing ideas, influences and images is a contribution from legendary saxophonist Branford Marsalis, another frequent Sting collaborator and another call back, on his 15th solo studio album, to his first.

That circle of trust, of a group of likeminded musicians pulling in a myriad of brilliant directions but with one accord, is another solid foundation for The Bridge. As a year’s worth of travel restrictions bit deeper, Sting also dug deeper, calling in – remotely – collaborators in France, Italy, America. “This album was made at distance. Nonetheless, what I’m singing about is what comes out of my head and my heart. The feelings are not small. They’re big emotions for me.”

But because of that, he used musicians with whom he’d collaborated before – Dominic Miller, Branford Marsalis, Melissa Musique, Gene Noble, Josh Freese, Manu Katché, Jo Lawry, Fred Renaudin, Peter Tickell, Julian Sutton, Laila Biali, Gavin Brown, Shaggy, Donal Hodgson, Tony Lake and Martin Kierszenbaum with whom he co-produced the album. So supported, Sting knew The Bridge – mixed by 4-time Grammy Award winner, Robert Orton – could soar high and span the world – and also link directly, deeply, into what he was trying to say, and how he was saying it. As this artist with multiple albums, soundtracks, live recordings and collaborations on his CV knows, “the most important thing on a record is the sound of a voice. And the vocals on this record are very close – they’re like I’m inside your head.”

Inside our head, but also abroad in the world, and drawing us together in a time of isolation, atomisation, yearning and new kinds of connection. And while we might still not be able to physically bridge certain gaps – geographical, social, emotional – musically we can.

Reflecting on the souls inhabiting this vitally *now* set of songs, Sting concludes that “those people are all between worlds. They’re not settled. They’re going from one thing to another. This album is about trying to make that journey. And I hope people will find something in this record that helps them navigate that.”

Tracklisting:

LP
SIDE A
1. Rushing Water
2. If It’s Love
3. The Book of Numbers
4. Loving You
5. Harmony Road

SIDE B
1. For Her Love
2. The Hills on the Border
3. Captain Bateman
4. The Bells of St. Thomas
5. The Bridge

2LP
SIDE A
1. Rushing Water
2. If It’s Love
3. The Book of Numbers

SIDE B
1. Loving You
2. Harmony Road
3. For Her Love
4. The Hills on the Border

SIDE C
1. Captain Bateman
2. The Bells of St. Thomas
3. The Bridge

SIDE D
1. Waters of Tyne
2. Captain Bateman’s Basement
3. (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay