On Sting's "The Soul Cages"
For the 30th anniversary of his third solo studio album, the prolific singer-songwriter expands upon his masterpiece with previously unreleased material.
In the realm of mononymous pop superstars, Sting has always been a musician I admire more than I really love.
The disconnect, I think, comes from the peculiar sense of detachment the man born Gordon Sumner gives off in nearly everything he does.
That’s not to say he isn’t exceptionally good at what he does. Leaving aside the acclaimed reggae-pop-punk fusion he helped realize in The Police, his solo output is a fascinating evolution over (ye gods) nearly four decades, from his Police-adjacent debut, 1985’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles through to the baroque excursions of his late aughts records (2006’s Songs from the Labyrinth and 2009’s If on a Winter’s Night …).
It is an impressive arc, and one largely charted by Sting’s own whims, which is an increasingly rare luxury for any professional musician in the age of atomized playlists and meager streaming payouts. Yet, there remains an indifference, or remoteness, about even Sting’s most stirring music.
Nowhere is Sting more arresting than on 1991’s The Soul Cages, his third solo studio album, which marks its 30th anniversary this year with the digital-only release of an expanded edition.
The record is arguably his masterwork, or at the very least, a high watermark on par with its follow-up, 1993’s Ten Summoner’s Tales. By deciding to revisit the material on 2013’s profoundly underwhelming The Last Ship, a record which spawned a subsequent Broadway production, Sting tacitly acknowledged its place in his canon.
Originally just nine tracks — swelling to 22 tracks on the 2021 re-release — The Soul Cages is a record steeped in grief. A concept album revolving around the death of Sting’s father, the music is spare, specific and striking. Cages, produced by his frequent collaborator Hugh Padgham, is, in spots, an almost chiaroscuro continuation of the melancholy strains found on his sophomore solo release, 1987’s … Nothing Like the Sun, conceived in the wake of his mother’s death.
But while “artistically processing a parent’s death through song” is a nifty marketing hook, Sting puts some distance between himself and the listener. The melancholy songs are delivered from a third-person perspective, as evidenced on the album-opening “Island of Souls”:
Billy was born within sight of the shipyard
First son of a riveter’s son
And Billy was raised as the ship grew a shadow
Her great hull would blot out the light of the sun …
Evocative, for sure, but also indicative of the bulk of The Soul Cages — Sting ruminating on the meaning of legacy, the weight of mourning and the responsibility of a father to a son, but in his own way and on his own terms. Publicly grieving in the guise of pop songs isn’t novel — The Flaming Lips, Neil Young and Nick Cave, among many others have done so through the years — but The Soul Cages seems to particularly resonate precisely because Sting refuses to provide the catharsis of showcasing *his own grief.*
Such a thing might strike you as unseemly, but consider the original record’s closing track, “When the Angels Fall,” a gorgeously elliptical reckoning with a life spent in the shadow of the church.
Its slippery rhythms, ghostly sonic layers and Sting’s hushed vocal delivery — “Take your father’s cross/Gently from the wall/A shadow still remaining” never fails to induce goosebumps — all deliver the cumulative impact (or the sensation of same) of a man coming to terms with what lies ahead, a figurative baring of the soul.
Sting comes the closest to what an autobiographical excavation of his emotions in this track, doubtless a deliberate choice to sequence it at the conclusion. As climactic moments go, it’s enormously powerful — so much so that the more I return to the album over the years and re-listen, the more I wish he’d embraced this approach elsewhere.
It makes sense that Sting could more personally reckon with a relationship with a higher power, as it is, in a way, more removed, more abstract. The loss of a parent can be world-altering, and as such, more difficult to reconcile with who you are and who you may become. But, no matter how much you may want to keep everyone else at arm’s length, grief has a way of decimating your defenses.
Contrast the grim beauty of “Angels” with this downright jaunty tune, Cages’ lead single, which became an American Top 10 hit.
“All This Time,” apart from being of the truly great pop songs of the 1990s, almost too neatly encapsulates Sting’s approach to the heavy material underpinning Cages. The undulating mandolin, percolating bass, filigrees of organ and pizzicato strings sit in opposition to the lyrics detailing the overwhelming finality of time’s passing:
They lived and they died
They prayed to their gods, but the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbles ‘til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found
Much like the mourning-as-mass-entertainment approach, wrapping the bitter into the sweet for easier digestion is another time-honored trick of the pop idiom. More than any other Soul Cages cut, “All This Time” functions as the record’s emotional through-line: Sad but stoic; ironic but sincere; breezy but serious.
All of which brings us to “Why Should I Cry for You?,” the album’s literal midpoint — again, such sequencing was hardly accidental — and the song which most threatens my loose thesis that Sting wasn’t wholly interested in mining his deepest sorrows for a pop record. In what could be an apocryphal anecdote (Wikipedia can only be trusted so far, kids), legend has it that Sting, following his father’s death, was stricken by writer’s block, until he began work on what would become “Why Should I Cry for You?.”
As can happen in art, the (possible) serendipity is irresistible, particularly when it comes to the album’s backstory — a man mourning his father’s death, writing down lyrics like “Sometimes I see your face/The stars seem to lose their place/Why must I think of you?” and asking “Would north be true?” alighting on the creative key unlocking all that follows.
In my view, “Why Should I” is the exception proving the rule, an example of what I’ll call knife’s-edge catharsis. Giving Sting the benefit of the doubt here, as he does sound genuinely plaintive and sincere throughout the four minute-and-47-second song — indeed, the lyric “And what would it mean to say/‘I loved you in my fashion’?” never fails to bring a lump to the throat — there’s still an undercurrent of restraint.
It’s as close as Sting comes to letting himself go completely, an almost literal embodiment of the classic British “stiff upper lip” cliche. Much like “When the Angels Fall,” “Why Should I” hints at a different, more raw direction “The Soul Cages” could have taken.
The 2021 edition of The Soul Cages tacks on roughly an hour of additional material, a hodgepodge of B-sides, live tracks, remixes and edits. (Hankering for four — five, if you count the album track — different versions of “Mad About You”? C’mon down!) Most of what’s here is interesting as a once-over, but feels otherwise expendable.
“I Miss You Kate,” a jazzy instrumental feels of a piece with the after-hours solemnity glimpsed elsewhere on Cages; “Oo La La Hugh,” an amusing, lightly funky bit of studio exploration illustrates Sting and Padgham’s meticulous approach, and the Spanish version of “Why Should I” reinforces the potency of the English-language original, indicating the universal resonance of which Sting sings.
As much as it’s possible to love an album, but not fully adore the artist who made it, so it is for me with Sting’s The Soul Cages. A diffident pop star capable of deep, emotive pop songs that burrow into your soul is a paradox I’ve never fully reconciled, and one I almost don’t want to.
Thirty years on, The Soul Cages is as captivating as it was when I first heard it, an album confronting grief at oblique angles, and in the process, helping you discover there is no one way to mourn that which you’ve lost.
The 30th anniversary expanded edition of The Soul Cages is available wherever you stream music.