Sting's last rock record dates back to 2003. And with this new album, after his sixteenth-century foray to John Downland with lutenist Edin Karamazov (2006), rock is again delayed. The title If On A Winter's Night seems to be the opening line of an old folk tale. Nothing could be further from the truth, because 'the album contains a kind of folk music, which evokes where I come from', says Sting.
Its primal ground here is mainly the cold and ghostly British winter. And so 'Christmas carols' stand next to English folk songs, combined with songs by Purcell and Schubert, and two new Sting songs. All 'moods of reflection'; each with atmospheric arrangements, in which Sting's raw voice contrasts beautifully with the acoustic instruments. But however original the premise may seem, Sting's contemporaries Sarah Brightman, Enya and Loreena McKennitt have already preceded him with such records in which the Christmas event is embedded in the bigger picture of winter as a time of repentance and reflection. Maybe after winter it will be time for an old-fashioned rock album. (JWvR)more