Sting - The Soul Cages

The Soul Cages is Sting at his most haunted, a 1991 album about grief, the sea and the shipyards of his Tyneside childhood. It remains the most personal record he has made.

Written after the death of his father and a long spell of writer's block, his third solo studio album turns loss into a song cycle steeped in North East imagery: rusting hulls, cold tides, a boy watching ships leave the slipway. Co-produced with Hugh Padgham, it trades the jazz-pop sparkle of his earlier solo work for something moodier and more searching, without ever losing his gift for melody.

Island of Souls opens the record with a story of a shipbuilder's son dreaming of escape, setting the tone for everything that follows. All This Time is the deceptively breezy single, a jaunty tune wrapped around a burial at sea. Mad About You drifts in on exotic colours and a slow-burning obsession, while the title track storms in on heavy guitar and an almost folk-tale menace.

Northumbrian pipes, sax lines and folk-tinged arrangements give the album its weathered, salt-air texture, and Sting's voice sounds closer and rawer than usual.

For anyone who knows him mainly through the hits, this is the record that shows how deep the well goes. It rewards a full, uninterrupted listen.