OK, my humble opinion on SL. I love it. I hate it. I like it. It's awful. It's great. It's crap. Wonderful. Garbage. The one thing I can say for sure is that it's a far better album than BND, although BND had Desert Rose (and the WONDERFUL b-side End of the Game). Take "Stolen Car" and "This War" away from this album and it's really good. Let's hope for a b-side as good as EOTG. Also a comment on the drum machine subject. Sting used to use drum machines way back in the police-era and have done so through out his solo career. I don't think that it's the fact that drum machines are used per se that people (as I) dislike, but it's more likely to be the drum samples used and the overall production we don't like. It's very slick, and it's very Kipper and it just sounds very clean electronic. Listen to Peter Gabriel for example he uses drum machines all the time but he makes them sound very "organic" and I love that. I also dont believe that using computers/sequencers/drum machines makes you a worse musician and it certainly does not make you a worse songwriter. Cheers, Patrik