Canter Bridge

If I did not hold Sting’s 2006 Deutsche Grammophon recording of the 16-17th centuries’ John Dowland’s lute-accompanied music in my hands, I would not believe that the British rock star had truly attempted to pull this one off.

But I do, and he has.

And not to bad effect, either. Unlike may Sting critics who seem to think the man should stay in his rut, I admire his constant rebellion against the artistic expectations to which we admirers of his art may want to hold him. I like his audacious impertinence.

I just didn’t expect this.

Yet Sting being Sting is rarely a bad thing, not least here. His ‘unschooled tenor’, as he puts it, may in some respects sound more like Dowland’s work would have in the 17th century than how we’d expect it to flow in the 20th. But leaving that point aside, Sting is a great narrator.

What he has accomplished in this unlikely CD is to narrate the Dowland phenomenon for many of us who would otherwise never have known him or his art. Sting’s recitations of Dowland’s letter (one critic unjustly calls them ‘murmured’) are actually my favorite part of the album’s 23 tracks.

You may want quickly to return to Sting and/or the Police doing what they do best. That will be quite all right. But don’t miss what the man can do once in a while down at the end of a blind alley.