The sombre, personal Soul Cages is a testament to Sting's strength as a storyteller. Each song creates its own dark, lonely world with recurring themes of sea, ships and filial love. The album opens with the wistful, virtually mist-drenched "Island of Souls", a tale of a shipbuilder's son orphaned by an accident who dreams of the open sea. Later, that sea becomes a prison for a lovelorn sailor in "Why Should I Cry for You?" Throughout, Sting dispenses with the conventions of pop lyrical structure. Saxophones, oboe and Northumbrian pipes reinforce the folksy feel of the instrumentation. Arguably the best song on the album, "Mad About You", is a mystical ballad about a king who has everything except the woman he loves. Grand, elegiac and allegorical, Soul Cages stands as one of Sting's most downcast recordings, and one of his most compelling. --Courtney Kemp