Sacred Love

1	Inside 4:47
2	Send Your Love 4:38
3	Whenever I Say Your Name 5:27
4	Dead Man's Rope 5:43
5	Never Coming Home 4:59
6	Stolen Car (Take Me Dancing) 3:58
7	Forget About the Future 5:12
8	This War 5:30
9	The Book of My Life 6:16
10	Sacred Love 6:03
11	Send Your Love Dave Audé Remix 3:15

Barnes & Noble

A Brand New Day was the title of Sting's last studio album, but it's on Sacred Love, four years later, that he stumbles out of bed to confront the cold light of a world very much changed. Fortunately, Sting wakes up sounding so energized, you can practically see him doing jumping jacks. The vital Sacred Love, recorded amid the rumblings of the war in Iraq, is suffused with the paranoia and anger of our post-9/11 world but also with joy, sex, and resolve. The album's title suggests Sting's solution to the messy state of our world: More passion and compassion, in all its forms, love at its most courageous. From the opening track, "Inside," a rejuvenated Sting is eager to smash through ignorance and fear. Awakened from an atrophied, alienated state, he's hungry for connection: Love is an explosion, an annihilation, a violent star, an angry scar. On song after song, love and faith are intertwined, as they are in the fiery ballad "Whenever I Say Your Name," in which the Englishman is yanked forcibly out of his stiff posture by Mary J. Blige: "Whenever I say your name, I'm already praying." To be sure, Sacred Love shares some cosmetic similarity to its studio predecessor -- Eastern instrumentation on "The Book of My Life," another car commercial in waiting in "Stolen Car (Take Me Out Dancing)." But this bristling effort is far from blasé adult contemporary pop. The beats are stark and funky, and Sting's singing is at its most immediate since his days with the Police. Two overtly political songs -- the vicious "This War," taking both Blair and Bush to task at the same time, and the more refined "Forget About the Future," which casts warring countries as battling spouses -- and a dark, insistent trance remix of "Send Your Love" join tracks lit up by gospel choirs and fiery jazz solos. Ensconced in his Tuscan villa, perfecting his yoga positions, Sting hasn't been this relevant in a long time -- Sacred Love is a welcome return. Mark Schwartz

Rolling Stone

1/2 The radiant Sacred Love is a vivid and frequently gorgeous reminder that Gordon Sumner is first and foremost a talented singer-songwriter. David Wild