Sting – If On a Winter's Night Review
New Christmas Music and Songs Inspired by the Frosty Season
Sting first gained international notoriety and stardom as the lead singer for the 80’s new wave rock band The Police.
Since parting ways with his bandmates, the British rocker has carved out a healthy career for himself crafting challenging and inspirational songs that incorporate elements of world music, jazz and classical that go beyond mere pop music.
Keeping with his serious and cerebral side, If On a Winter’s Night mixes traditional carols such as “The Snow It Melts the Soonest” and “Gabriel’s Message” with Sting’s compositions such as “The Hounds of Winter”, as well as a track traditionally sung at Halloween (Soul Cake).
If On a Winter’s Night
Produced and arranged by Sting and Robert Sadin, If On a Winter's Night doesn’t follow the tired path well-beaten by other star-studded Christmas albums that feature new interpretations of well-known Christmas clichés such as “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells”.
Instead, If On a Winter's Night deserves recognition for being an album based on the winter season rather than Christmas itself. In all fairness, despite a few references to Christmas, this sounds more like an album proper from an artist of extremely high calibre, than a Christmas CD.
Sting and Christmas
“Seven musicians, wrapped in scarves and coats, instruments resting on their knees, sit huddled around the kitchen fireplace, nursing hot mugs of tea, attempting to get some warmth into their fingers” Sting writes in the album’s liner notes retelling the process of recording this album in “the old house that sits atop a Tuscan hillside” in February 2009.
Holding an “ambivalent attitude towards the celebration of Christmas” and realizing that for many the season does not hold many jolly moments, but rather periods of intense isolation and sadness, Sting avoids the Christmas clichés and sings of the darker, more introspective side of the holiday season.
Sting's Serious But Heartwarming Christmas Music
With many of the tracks based on sombre old carols from the British Isles, these songs are anything but cheery. This is a serious but warm record, perfect for winter nights gathered by the fire watching the snow drift outside in heavy contemplation.
Like a candle light service in the early morning, it has a warm glow of Christmas without getting caught up in the kitch. Sting could have made the big cash grab but for and artist of his calibre, instead he made one of the best Christmas albums of 2009.
Sting’s If On a Winter's Night, a classic album to set along side Enya’s 2008 Christmas album And Winter Came, is available now.
Sting – If On a Winter's Night
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