Mastodawn

The whole album (which is also a musical now) has an amazing range of styles, sounds, and secrets waiting for a careful listener.

Highly recommended.

Eleventy-thousand dog stars out of seven.

cc @ajr because you'll love various bits of this guaranteed

Andrew Roach Apr 30, 2017

@djsundog I'll dig in. I love The Police, but I usually come away disappointed from Sting solo. It really feels like the music was not meant for me.

Andrew Roach Apr 30, 2017

@djsundog okay, this is pretty great.

@ajr as a concept album it verges on fantastic at moments, weaves some neat stories with musically interesting forms. I was honestly surprised the first time I listened to the album with the range it took me through as a listener.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbMY9lf58FA

JP 🌈Apr 30, 2017

@djsundog _nods_ it's beautiful. there was a PBS show where he and members of the cast gave a concert of the songs.

@djsundog I have found his later work to be uneven. But the sequence of DBT => Mercury Falling has some of the amazing songwriting in modern music.

@djsundog there should have been a "most" in there. #coffee #nocoffeeyet

@evilchili yeah, I have a really hard time selling him to folks due to that unevenness, but I really believe the good in the catalog so far outweighs the dregs that's it's worth revisiting the Sting every now and again to see what amazing thing he's buried along the way :D

His best is so so good.

@djsundog what's your opinion of 57th and 9th?

@evilchili like it's a weird experiment in finding his own inner Duncan Sheik in some echoes of a younger garage iteration of himself, almost - none of the tracks are among my favorites of his, but there's some good moments where he channels his inner storyteller better than others,and a few tasty sets of changes scattered about. Overall, it leaves me with a taste of adult AOR airplay fodder after a listen through rather than feeling like a super cohesive work, if that makes sense.

@evilchili and now I'm still thinking about this Sunday morning hot take and thinking it might deserve revisiting so I'll be doing another full listen through of the album this afternoon 😁

@djsundog it does. The record really feels like he's chasing radio play, but none of the riffs are as strong as they would have been 30 years ago and the songs don't feel like they come from a place of deep inspiration.
So while there's no St. Augustine In Hell here, there's no Synchronicity either.

I've often thought he'd be a fantastic producer, if you could find a desk big enough for him and his ego. :)

@evilchili heh, probably yeah :D

The album cover makes me feel really old, too, oddly, and I catch myself almost flinching when I look at the screen while it's displayed.

@djsundog A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

@evilchili Who May or May Not have had Work Done

Vertigo Apr 30, 2017

@djsundog I have to admit, Sting has gone way too mellow for my preferences. Nice music, but it's just elevator music to me. I really miss the creativity he had back in his earlier days, circa Synchronicity I/II.

@vertigo that's fair - hard to maintain that angry young bee thing for the long term ;)