STING "Songs From the Labyrinth: Music by John Dowland, performed by Sting and Edin Karamazov" (Deutsche Grammophon, . Sting - ex-Police captain, star of "The Bride" - has long suffered critics' ravings that this supersmart golden boy is nothing but a pretentious twit. What about us critics?
We've had to endure the smothering preciousness of "History Will Teach Us Nothing," "The Soul Cages," covering Prokofiev for "Russians." And we have. We even delighted at his mention of "Nabokov.
" But 17th-century music with lutes and Elizabethan verse? Come on. Fans of Sting's thespian efforts (both of you) will take pleasure in his actor's rasp crisply intoning the high, slow "Flow, my tears (Lachrimae)" and the busy "Can she excuse my wrongs?
" And when Sting in his best Renaissance Faire oration says something about jarring sounds during, it's all one can do to cease from tittering so. On "Redder Than That," Eddi e Montgomery and Troy Gentry si ng about attending a high school r eunion and realizing, to their obvious delight, that they and their friends remain as redneck as ever. With "Some People Change," the dependable country-rocking duo remain at their rousing best when they let that unapologetic good-old-boy side show, whether warning an ex-lover that "Your Tears Are Coming" or delivering the general flip-off "What Do Ya Think About That.
" Not that these tough guys can't show a tender side - they do it well with "Lucky Man" and the father-son saga "Twenty Years Ago." All of that almost makes up for the serious PC mushiness of "Some People Change" and "Takes All Kinds" (you know, to make the world go 'round). "Clouds," meanwhile, is a howlingly bad ballad that sounds more like a parody of a tearjerker than the real thing.
The five horns suggest hints of dance bands past, while Joe Doria's Hammond B-3 organ ce ments the band's basic groove credentials. The result is a heady mix of the familiar and the far out. This band works well for listening or shimmying, a rare feat.
Saxophonist Skerik, who has one name, is the putative leader - his credits range from the jazz funk band Garage a Trois to groovemeisters Medeski, Martin Wood - but the group that bears his name plays like a true collective, going slinky on "Syncopate the Taint" before the horns go wild and blow out some righteous, Charlie Mingus-strength froth.
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