Sting is making a belated return to rock, crafting a new album of in-studio creations that will be titled 57th & 9th. Producer Martin Kierszenbaum compares it directly to his time in the Police, though Sting himself does not.

"Most of it was done in an impulsive way – one or two takes," Kierszenbaum says, in a new talk with Rolling Stone. "I don't think he's rocked like this since Synchronicity," the Police's 1983 swan-song studio effort.

Sting later got back together with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland for a Police tour in 2007-08, but insists it had little influence on 57th & 9th. "That reunion was an exercise in nostalgia, clear and simple," Sting says. "A very successful exercise in nostalgia, but there was no attempt to take that somewhere else."

Instead, Sting holed up in the studio with a group musicians that include his touring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and guitarist Dominic Miller, along with Jerry Fuentes and Diego Navaira. Sting's approach was to arrive without material, writing new songs as they went.

The results, he says, are quite unlike more recent forays into lute music (2006's Songs from the Labyrinth), Christmas songs (2009's If on a Winter's Night...), orchestral works (2010's Symphonicities) and Broadway productions (2013's The Last Ship). "It's not a lute album," Sting says with a smile. "It's rockier than anything I've done in a while. This record is a sort of omnibus of everything that I do, but the flagship seems to be this energetic thing. I'm very happy to put up the mast and see how it goes."

No release date has yet been announced for 57th & 9th, while Sting continues a co-headlining summer tour with Peter Gabriel.

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