Going to a Sting concert is like browsing through a bookshop. This is the man, after all, whose album titles pay homage to Shakespeare and Chaucer, who campaigns as a political and environmental activist and who scours the world for musical styles to assimilate.
With Sting as our assistant, we traipsed from section to section, leafing through pages of political and narrative-driven music. Beginning, of course, with "just published", the learned and literate elder statesman of rock slung on his bass guitar and rumbled into A Thousand Years from Brand New Day, his most recent album. A small plague of flying ants had descended on Marlay Park, and Sting manfully wrestled for attention as thousands of fingers burrowed into invaded hair.
His songs brimming with characters and stories, though shamelessly dawdling around the romance section, Sting performed with laser focus. Bouncing on his toes like a limber athlete, he pitched his gravelly voice into If You Love Somebody Set Them Free to cheery responses from the crowd. A sneaky delve into the "humour" shelf yielded a droll Perfect Love . . . Gone Wrong - whose protagonist is a jealous mutt - with drummer Manu Katche lending the shaggy-dog story his rapping talents. Fill Her Up began with a lawless country-tinged pedal steel guitar before a plot twist revealed a conscience-searing synth gospel choir, beautiful despite its oddity.
But a rummage through the classics, including to Sting's time in The Police, delivered fond and familiar favourites. Englishman In New York (musical travel literature?), the Daniel Defoe-inspired Roxanne and the romance Every Breath You Take warmed the audience as candles swept through the crowd.
Despite Chris Botti's superb trumpeting and Jason Rebello's jazzy keyboards, these best-sellers were pleasant, inoffensive and forgettable. That's the final sting in the tale.
