Synchronicity
The Police
Take the Space Between Us, Fill It Up Some Way
"Synchronicity I" hurtles along at a hundred miles an hour, carrying word of "a connecting principle" and strange occurrences happening far away. It's a Police version of a pattern-pulse exercise, a Steve Reich outtake played by spiked staccato guitars. Its finale is two or so minutes of deliciously pulverizing rhythm unlike anything in rock, the snapping backbeat of a gospel jubilee gone haywire.
Thus begins one of the more curious multi-platinum successes in rock history, a tense and challenging work that is a million miles away from "Roxanne, turn on the red light." Inside its twelve tracks are worries of apocalyptic doom ("Walking in Your Footsteps"), tales of power and betrayal ("Wrapped Around Your Finger"), Carl Jung's ideas about coincidence and the undetected connections between people and events ("Synchronicity I" and "II," "Tea in the Sahara"), and the vows of an obsessive stalker ("Every Breath You Take").
Though it shares some of the dark tone and the fluid, jazzlike rhythms the Police used on its previous album, Ghost in the Machine (1981), Synchronicity is more revved, more volatile. Even at sedate tempos, the band seems inclined to see what happens when things careen out of control. The big bangs in the songs are triggered by zooming fly-by guitars, or drummer Stewart Copeland's skillfully knotted polyrhythms, or vocal harmonies that are searing and strident.
From its beginnings as a New Wave trio in 1977, the Police—Copeland, bassist and singer Sting, and guitarist Andy Summers—did things differently. The band's first two albums hit upon a reggae-pop sound that spread like wildfire, and over the next four years, the contentious trio crafted albums that offered insanely addictive radio songs as well as darker experimental journeys. Unlike so many rock successes, the Police evolved creatively at each step. As Sting's writing matured, reggae became a spice rather than the main groove, and the musical textures broadened. And then, after the extensive Synchronicity tour, the trio, at that moment the biggest band in the world, concluded it had exhausted the artistic possibilities. So it walked away. But not before proving that it's possible for a rock band to pursue challenging, defiantly noncommercial musical ideas and still thrill an awful lot of people.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1983, A&M
Key Tracks: "Synchronicity II," "King of Pain," "Every Breath You Take," "Miss Gradenko," "Tea in the Sahara"
Catalog Choice: Zenyatta Mondatta; Ghost in the Machine
Next Stop: XTC: Skylarking
After That: Oysterhead: The Grand Pecking Order
Book Pages: 603–604
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Comments:
#1 from John Adcock, Ashtead, United Kingdom - 02/06/2009 7:06
Most rock bands over-stay their welcome and (re-union tour apart!) - The Police couldn’t be accused of that. They called it a day at the top of their game, and Synchronicity was a high point on which to depart. The album showcases just how much Sting had developed as a songwriter - and how far ahead of his colleagues he was. “Every Breath You Take” -penned at Ian Fleming’s house in Jamaica by Sting - is perhaps the most haunting and well-known of The Police’s hits - and Sting knew it was a monster hit more or less before he’d finished it.
But the album contains other gems as well - The bizarre, pulsating Synchronicity 2, and equally eloquent songs about feelings and emotions that are often supressed. People often say the eighties was a bad decade for music - The Police prove otherwise with this excellent swansong.
