CD of the week

Sting: If On a Winter's Night Deutsche Grammophon ****When Sting's record company asked him to do a Christmas record, he turned them down flat, but later came back with the idea of a more general winter album. Digging deep into music's old history, he came across folk songs, carols and lullabies, and the result is quite magnificent.

Sting has a bit of form in older musical stylings. His last album, Songs from the Labyrinth (a reworking of tunes by the renowned 16th-century lute player John Dowland), showed he could handle work of this nature in an empathetic manner.

If On a Winter's Nightkicks off with a 14th-century carol, Gabriel's Message, which sets the slightly sinister feel of the whole album. The lyrics they wrote all those centuries ago were far removed from today's melodramatic concerns. These are serious and heavy concerns, put over some scary musical arrangements.

The pace picks up with the marvelous Soul Cake, an old Northumberland folk song that Sting sings in an über-Geordie accent, and which sounds like a Pogues song in its own giddy way. Sting's voice is sometimes unrecognisable – he has found a new deeper and warmer register with which to sing these songs without going all finger-in-the-ear.

At times you are reminded of just how close the new and old musical worlds are. The ancient There Is No Rose of Such Virtuecould be a Beach Boys off-cut, while elsewhere you could be listening to an 18th-century Nick Cave or Antony and the Johnsons.

Two of Sting's own compostions ( The Hounds of Winterand Lullaby for an Anxious Child) fit in seamlessly, but it's when he goes for something a bit daring that he really excels: a reworking of Schubert's Der Leiermann – here known as Hurdy Gurdy Man– is finely executed, while Bach's You Only Cross My Mind in Winteris turned into a Sinatra-type croon.

This is one of the most adventurous albums you’ll hear this year. www.sting.com

Download tracks: Soul Cake, There Is No Rose of Such Virtue