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Mercury Falling | 
| Manufacturer: A&M
Category: Digital Music Album
Buy New: $8.90
Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 41927
Genre: album-oriented-rock-music
Media: MP3 Download
Running Time: 0 Minutes
ASIN: B000W237Y2
Publication Date: March 12, 1996
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| Customer Reviews: Read 91 more reviews...
 Slow and unsafe November 13, 2008
B. Hicks (Reno, NV)
It took a considerable amount of time to receive this CD AND it was shipped in a thin plastic wrapping without any padding. What I was charged for shipping a padded envelope would have been better. Luckily, it plays well.
 Sting Rules! April 26, 2008
Tammy Davis (texas)
I was surprised by all the songs I have forgotten that Sting has- this is a great album- can't go wrong with Sting!
Mercury Falling - Yes December 21, 2007
P. Stang (Annapolis, MD)
I love this CD from Sting. It has many of the songs I already loved. Some of these songs have been taken forward by Sting in later concerts, such as Lithium Sunset (in the Brand New Day tour). Valparaiso was in a movie. I had become familiar with some of the songs from YouTube - Let Your Soul be Your Pilot and Brought to My Senses. The Hounds of Winter from the All This Time documentary/performance 9/11. All the songs have become favorites of mine. The first song and the last song have the title "Mercury Falling" in them. This is one of my favorite Sting CDs.
Le bel homme avec beaucoup de regrets November 23, 2007
Gregor von Kallahann
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Given world enough and time, I likely would have been a huge fan of Sting. I was pushing my mid-twenties when I first heard the Police, and while I didn't actually care for "Roxanne" on the first listen, I did come to like that song and just about the entirety of the band's reggae influenced oeuvre. Over the years, I kept sampling their work--if not passionately following their career. When Sting went solo, I pretty much followed the same pattern--listening attentively to this release, overlooking that. There was little rhyme or reason to the pattern, just the typical getting involved in the cares and concerns of adult life and finding myself doing something more like dabbling into music (and all the other artforms--film and literature-- I had cared so passionately about in my high school and college years)than following it passionately.
The rap on Sting as being a bit full-of-himself and pretentious probably didn't help matters. Of course, I was always quick to defend favorites from my own coming-of-age years against the same charges. I should have realized that pomposity can co-exist with real talent, and sometimes you cheat yourself by failing to overlook that particular failing in an artist.
Listening to this album more than ten years after its orignial release, I find it pretty damn good--and if the fans are calling THIS one a lesser effort, then I had better make haste to catch up on all his work that I've missed out on over the past decade or so. There's not a bad track on this CD, and although there were at least a few moments that sounded a little too familiar. The 'soulful' ending of "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," seemed awfully imitative of the fade out on "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," for instance--and the follow up track "I Was Brought to My Senses" starts off a little too close to "Fields of Gold," I thought, for comfort. But ever the sly dog, Sting pulls a musical switcheroo on the latter track and brings it swiftly from pastoral folk to smooth (if equally pastoral) lite jazz. (And, no, I don't think that's a bad thing.)
Those who even got the "correct" interpretation of "Every Breath You Take" (the ones who would know better than to have that tune play at their wedding) know that Sting can be a bit of creepy storyteller. Of course, just as I would never have assumed that he was capable of stalking a love interest, I rest assured that he would never really wantonly shoot down a total stranger, as the narrator of "I Hung My Head" (far and away this album's eeriest tune does). He's telling a story--and a disturbing one it is.
From what I can see, it's probably always a mistake to view Sting's lyrics as being autobiographical in any sense. I do recall reading a few tidbits here and there that his marriage to Trudie Styler has had its ups and downs, but I wouldn't assume that his touching portrait of a betrayed husband and father in "I'm So Happy I Can't Help Crying" is based on his own life (and if it is, I'm not sure I need to know that anyway). But it remains an insightful portrait of the shifting mental states that anyone caught in that situation would likely go through (bitter denial, anger and, eventually, some accomodation to the reality of the situation). Sting creates a mini-movie in that song--and pulls it off with aplomb.
In fact, I would imagine that I'm scarcely the only one who sometimes thinks of Sting tunes in cinematic terms. The two songs cited above brought to mind to (much more recent films). "I Hung My Head" made me thing of BABEL, and "I Hung My Head" brought to mind the very disturbing LITTLE CHILDREN. For a three minute song to even begin to evoke a masterful full-length cinematic release strikes me as a real achievement. Obviously, a songwriter can only suggest the outlines of a story that a film or novel could flesh out in much greater detail, but to his credit, many of Mr. Sumner's tales seem pretty much complete in and of themselves.
It's hard to come up with a better illustration of the pain of divorced dads, say, than the pithy lines, "The park is full of Sunday fathers and melted ice cream...What can a father do but baby-sit sometimes."
It's not really armchair psychoanalysis to note the running theme of abandonment and isolation that run through the album. One can assume that these are themes that are close to the songwriter's heart without assuming them to be truly autobiographical. The desolate imagery of the initial track "Hounds of Winter" (which became the sole composition from this album to also be included on the 2001 live release ALL THIS TIME) speaks more obliquely than some of the other songs about the pain of separation. It's bleak, wintry and it sets the tone and suggests a theme for the album that is sombre but not overwhelmingly grim.
I like this record...a lot. And I find--belatedly--that I can certainly forgive the artist his occasional pretensions. How many albums can you think of whose opening lyrics also serve as the disc's coda. No, I can't think of too many either, but it seems like a very 60s or early 70s kind of ploy, the kind of concept album device that--at least conceptually--makes you want to cringe. But the Stingmeister pulls it off with a leger de main that makes you forget any reservations about that (or about his French!).
 Sting - MERCURY FALLING (1996) July 26, 2006
Tom Benton (North Springfield, VT USA)
Sting followed up the superb TEN SUMMONER'S TALES with MERCURY FALLING, on which the former Police frontman experiments with blues, country, folk, and a little bit of gospel. The album's biggest problem is a lack of energy. Part of the charm of Sting's earlier releases was the power of his songs and the passion in his vocals. Most of the songs on MERCURY FALLING are devoid of much energy, resulting in an unexciting, often pretentious album. It does have its highlights, namely the bluesy "All Four Seasons" and the uptempo "Twenty Five To Midnight", the latter of which was inexplicably omitted from the US and Canadian releases of the album; also, the emotional "You Still Touch Me" and the gospel-influenced "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot". It's far from a bad album, but in the end it feels like Sting doesn't have his heart in it, resulting in an enjoyable, but unextraodinary recording.
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