New love for Synchronicity

[Wait and See]

>>>Three Words: Stewart's snare sound.<<<

Good point...that freakin' uber-80s gated snare sound. I've never been able to figure out how anybody could have thought that sounded good.

[jennym]

I listened to Synchronicity nonstop when it came out and it was my favorite album. I think I was 15 yo. It is not my favorite now but it is a great listen. I really liked Mother back then and I still really like it! I’m reading Andy’s book now and from what I’ve read so far, he had a very healthy loving relationship with his mom.
I have to back up on the thread here to share my PARANOIA of getting hurt before the concerts! I am focused on getting in great health and shape before my first show if Vegas. I've also been clear with myself that I must be disciplined during my stay in Vegas before the show so that I do not stay up all night before the show and become exhausted. I MUST be fresh and totally awake and fully conscious to soak it all in! Cheers, in moderation, of course - NO HANGOVERS before the show!

[DirtyMartini]

I've been listening to the whole Police albums in the car lately (as opposed to bits on "shuffle"), and I'm discovering that I actually enjoy Synchronicity in its own right. I do not love all of Sting's lyrics, but I like the overall sound of the album -- it has an open quality that seems to hearken back to Zenyatta. "Miss Gradenko" kicks; "EBYT," "King of Pain," "Wrapped," and "Tea" each have a distinct moodiness but avoid drowning in it (unlike "Invisible Sun," IMO); I don't love the lyric line of "Footsteps" but I do love how the percussion helps create the melody; the Synchs show their age but still have an energy that sticks in your head; "Mother" is (not necessarily "good" but) hilarious (the percussive whipping sound rocks); and yes -- dare I say it -- I dig the jazzy grooves of "Murder by Numbers" and not just because the time signatures at the beginning are just that. (I LOVE how that song is like Marmite: people either love it or hate it.) I prefer the earlier three albums, but for me Synchronicity as a whole works in a way that GitM doesn't.

[Sidebar on GitM: As much as I love its logo, GitM is the one album that just doesn't do it for me (I can only listen to a select few songs). Too many bloated lyrics, the horns (and some of the synth) get on my nerves (and date the crap out of it), and you really have to struggle to find Andy underneath the bloody brass morass. Stewart does some AMAZING work on that album and Sting has some really good basslines, but there seems to be a real palpable absence of Andy's quirky chunky rhythms: it feels like he got relegated to Guitar Solo Guy, and even then he has to fight against the synth and dueling horns (e.g., "Demolition Man"). I would KILL for a pared-down, non-brass version of that album. /End sidebar. Thank you.]


jennym, I hear ya on getting in shape for the concert. The prospect of standing on folding chairs for 2 hours is great incentive for working off a few extra pounds.

[wgtomlinson]

This forum is so funny. Everyone's post feels like an extension of my own person in that there is so much in common.

Synchronicity pisses me off in that it showed the depth to which the Poice could reach artisitcially but never carried on b/c they broke up. Just listen to the live version of Walking in Your Footsteps, a "kind of" whole new direction for them. Stu on the stand up drum kit banging away some exotic beat to beef up the crappy dum machine patter. Sting blows into that funny bone horn at the beginning. Andy getting into atmospheric guitar sounds. All really cool stuff.

[edgyspice]

I think Ghost in the Machine has topped Synchronicity as my favorite, but "Tea in the Sahara" is one of my all-time favorite songs.

[hollo]

[quote="DirtyMartini"]I've been listening to the whole Police albums in the car lately (as opposed to bits on "shuffle"), and I'm discovering that I actually enjoy Synchronicity in its own right. I do not love all of Sting's lyrics, but I like the overall sound of the album -- it has an open quality that seems to hearken back to Zenyatta. "Miss Gradenko" kicks; "EBYT," "King of Pain," "Wrapped," and "Tea" each have a distinct moodiness but avoid drowning in it (unlike "Invisible Sun," IMO); I don't love the lyric line of "Footsteps" but I do love how the percussion helps create the melody; the Synchs show their age but still have an energy that sticks in your head; "Mother" is (not necessarily "good" but) hilarious (the percussive whipping sound rocks); and yes -- dare I say it -- I dig the jazzy grooves of "Murder by Numbers" and not just because the time signatures at the beginning are just that. (I LOVE how that song is like Marmite: people either love it or hate it.) I prefer the earlier three albums, but for me Synchronicity as a whole works in a way that GitM doesn't.

[Sidebar on GitM: As much as I love its logo, GitM is the one album that just doesn't do it for me (I can only listen to a select few songs). Too many bloated lyrics, the horns (and some of the synth) get on my nerves (and date the crap out of it), and you really have to struggle to find Andy underneath the bloody brass morass. Stewart does some AMAZING work on that album and Sting has some really good basslines, but there seems to be a real palpable absence of Andy's quirky chunky rhythms: it feels like he got relegated to Guitar Solo Guy, and even then he has to fight against the synth and dueling horns (e.g., "Demolition Man"). I would KILL for a pared-down, non-brass version of that album. /End sidebar. Thank you.]


jennym, I hear ya on getting in shape for the concert. The prospect of standing on folding chairs for 2 hours is great incentive for working off a few extra pounds.[/quote]

Terrific post.

I agree with most of what you say. I see gitm as an album the police had to make if they were to progress and develop as a band. Yes, it does sound dated and cluttered but they are taking things to a different level from the first three albums. This album is a stepping stone to synchronicity where they've ironed out the problems on gitm. I would also like to say here and now that spirits in the material world is one hell of a song. The bass line is so great. One of the best songs by the police. And sting's bass work on hungry for you is addictive. When we listen to re humanize yourself it sounds cluttered, messy and the sound is jarring. There are many problems on the production of this song. But there are many good moments and songs like secret journey take the police to the next level as it is more expansive a sound than on the first three albums.

Like one of the other posters says the live version of walking in your footsteps is fantastic, and so is the live version of king of pain. Those processed beats improve the song no end. I was taken aback when i heard these versions on you tube as they are better than on the album version.

Padgm has got his act together by the time of synchronicity and is earning his money as a producer. The production is great on many of the songs and it has a nice sheen about it. The songwriting is strong and it is incredible that the police had five hit albums in a row. Hardly any band has had such success.

Murder by numbers is boring though. Next to mother the worst song on the album and i'll never understand why it's rated so highly on here. Don't get it.

All of us on this forum love zenyatta mondatta. It has a special atmosphere about it and a special place in our hearts. I urge people on this forum to listen to in utero by nirvana as i can definitely see parallels between this and zenyatta. Hopefully you can get much satisfaction out of listening to this album.

[hollo]

[quote="Wait and See"]I like Wrapped Around Your Finger, King of Pain and Miss Gradenko. The lyrics for the first two are average, but I like the music. I think Miss Gradenko is Stewart's second best song after Darkness, although it's kind of obsolete now that the Soviet Union's gone. Great tune though.

Otherwise, I have to say I can basically do without the album. It has four songs that I think are among the weakest they ever did-- Walking in Your Footsteps, Mother, Tea in the Sahara, and Murder by Numbers. Synch I & II and O My God have average music, but cheesy/bleak/lecturing lyrics that I strongly dislike. As for EBYT, on a certain level artistically you can't argue with it, but it's the kind of song that could only be written by someone who's in a very dark pit in life...the kind of place most of us try to avoid getting into.

In short, I rarely listen to any of the songs from the album but the first three I mentioned, and occasionally EBYT.

Ironically, I think their earlier material has held up better over time than their later stuff. The first two albums are full of stuff that sounds new even now, and as you go through the last three, I think it gets progressively more dated sounding.[/quote]

I hear what you are saying but don't you love the bass on "oh my god". It's groovy like hungry for you. What a terrific bass player sting is.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

?? Wow. I guess I'm the only one that loves GiTM with all my heart. I honestly can't decide whether it, Zen or Reg is my favorite.

I'm not crazy about "Tea" or "Murder." But maybe some of my problem with Synch in general is having heard it played to death on the radio. You just don't hear, say, "One World" like you hear "King of Pain."

[Wait and See]

I like Ghost more than Synchronicity, but less than the others. The first three songs, along with Omegaman and Darkness, are among their best, but the rest of the album is kind of forgettable. I think I'd rank them like this:

Regatta
Outlandos
Zenyatta
Ghost
Synchronicity

[Kim]

[quote="Divemistress of the Dark"]?? Wow. I guess I'm the only one that loves GiTM with all my heart. I honestly can't decide whether it, Zen or Reg is my favorite.

I'm not crazy about "Tea" or "Murder." But maybe some of my problem with Synch in general is having heard it played to death on the radio. You just don't hear, say, "One World" like you hear "King of Pain."[/quote]

Agreed Dive. All the Synch stuff is overplayed on the radio. I think Regatta is the best because Sting was starting to take the band more in his direction and was working his hardest to proove his songwriting skills but Stew wasn't going to give up that easily, . Outlandos was good but too rough. Zenyatta was good but suffered from the "gotta make an album NOW, whether or not it's good" syndrome,so while it had its moments, it also had its not so good moments, Ghost started to go a little but TOO Sting but has some great moments, One World being one of them, and Synch is overplayed and WAY too Sting. I usually prefer the songs you never hear on the radio, like Murder By Numbers, the title track and Walking In Your Footsteps. Not that I dislike any of the albums, I'm just saying if I really had to critique them, this is what I'd come up with.

[Wait and See]

I think Regatta is where they really crystallized their sound. If you had to give someone one of the albums as a representation of what the Police are about, that would be it. Some of the statements I've seen from them suggest that they started listening to critics who were saying "yeah, but can they do more than this reggae shtick?", and I think they started over-thinking what they were doing to an extent, which reached its apex on Synchronicity. Regatta sounds more like a pure expression of them just doing what they wanted to do, and doing it as a band.

I think Sting started self-consciously trying to be "profound" on Zenyatta, and that kept intensifying as time went on. To me, a song like "No Time This Time", which is simply about being caught in the rush of modern society, is far more original, and "profound in its simplicity" than making literary quotations...

[georgygirl]

Good analysis Wait and See.

My favorite always is Outlandos D'Amour, but it doesn´t matter to much because each CD had a special meaning to me...

I agree with you that Regatta D'Blanc is like an Hymn to The Police.

[DirtyMartini]

Don't worry, DM -- I seem to remember a thread of love for GitM, so there's plenty of affection out there. Some brilliant songs, but the overall sound of it just doesn't work for me. Similar to how hollo feels, I find the arrangements to be packed too damn tight, and you lose that lovely (and rather signature) openness that you get on the other albums. I think I prefer Synchronicity because there's more breathing room.

BUT I would absolutely place a pared-down version of GitM in heavy rotation. A lot of people complained about the horns during the GitM tour; for me it applies to the album as well. E.g., I LOVE "Hungry" and "Demo Man" -- great songs, great bass -- but because of the arrangements, I just never listen to them. I even tend to avoid "One World" despite SC's unbelievable work because it has that quality to it. But boil GitM down to bass, drums, guitar, and voice (and the "Magic" piano -- sorry Andy), and I'd be all over it.

[Note: I really like brass instruments, so I'm not hating on the horns section. There is just something about the quality of the 80s-brass-style-sound that doesn't sit well with my ears (not even back then). I adore Seger's "Turn the Page," but the opening notes of that saxophone make my fingers curl.]

Hollo, it's funny that you comment on "Rehumanize" because I *like* that the song is jarring and a bit messy cuz I find that it has a more organic quality than the preceding 4. That's one of the tunes in which I like the horns: the brass (mostly) fights *against* the 80s-brass sound (plus, mimicking sirens is cool) -- and many of SC's songs lean toward a slightly off quality that I enjoy. For me "TMI" is the low point on GitM; everything is clamoring for attention, which creates a mushy sound. (For the designers out there: if everything is bold, nothing is bold.)

But I absolutely agree that GitM is a transitional album. I love seeing The Boys experiment and change things up; I even like seeing Sting play with his new toys, even if I don't necessarily like the results. But I find that Andy -- and even Stewart -- tend to get lost in the arrangements. While I think Andy gets relegated to Solo Guy, I think Stewart tends to get pushed into the role of Timekeeper. And one of the reasons that I fell in love with The Police was because the drummer was a musician rather than a metronome. It's hard to find his brilliant details and subtleties underneath all the other stuff on GitM. Like Kim said, for me GitM is a bit too Sting.

I think one of the extraordinary things about the 5 albums is watching the band grow up and mature through the years. I agree with W&S that I'd use Regatta as an intro -- it crystallizes the sound and has less of the punk-for-punk's sake quality (not dissing Outlandos -- is a wonderful album) but it still has that newness to it, that bright-eyed hint of "Holy shit we can get paid doing this?" excitement. I think Zenyatta is where you start to see the band "grow up" -- which is inevitable and not a bad thing. Some of my favorite melodies come off that album. My only complaint with Zenyatta (and I know the rush to release was an issue) is that so many of the tunes feel abbreviated and under-developed, like they're snippets but not quite songs. That album leaves me frustrated for more.

Although unlike W&S, I like when Sting pulls out the literary allusions. For me the lyrics get bloated when he trades in subtlety for the clue hammer. There's a fine line between socially conscious and (as W&S suggested) preachy/cheesey -- just like there's a fine line between trying to be profound and actually being it -- and sometimes I don't think he quite finds the balance. Sting has an amazing facility with language when he's really got his subtlety muscles working.

As live arrangements go (as hollo mentioned), all the rules change: The Boys really shine live and bring their tunes to a-whole-nother level. I think one of the reasons I like the melodies from Zenyatta so much is because so many came from their live jams. Unlike most studio bands, these guys can REALLY play, and I think they play best when together in front of an audience: they've got the audience to stroke their egos and their sense of competition, but they've got each other (as I said elsewhere for Sting) to reign each other in, psych each other up, and kick each other's ass.

Good gods. Am I still talking? Sorry. I'll shut up now. Jeesh.

[nathanarizona]

DirtyMartini et al - I think one of the things I'm most excited about with this tour is hearing the Ghost songs in the bare bones fashion you're talking about. Ghost has always been a weird album for me as far as the Police go. For years it was at the bottom of the 5 until I listened to it really loud and discovered there are some really great songs underneath all of the brass and "production." Demolition Man has some fantastic Andy guitar but it's way back in the mix (as everyone here has mentioned). The album has grown on me through the years and I actually love it now. But I love them all. It's sort of impossible for me to rank them after Regatta and Outlandos - those are definitely at the top. The other 3 go back and forth - a lot of that has to do with nostalgia. I got those LP's "in the moment" so they have certain memories and events associated with them that can't be removed. For that reason the "dated" feel some of you have mentioned doesn't really bother me at all. And the lyrics thing is so subjective - I always go by the following Freddie Mercury quote on that: "Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. Fuck them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If YOU see it, dear, then it's there."

[DirtyMartini]

[quote="nathanarizona"]DirtyMartini et al - I think one of the things I'm most excited about with this tour is hearing the Ghost songs in the bare bones fashion you're talking about. [/quote]

Absolutely. I am SOOO excited about this. The anticipation is killing me.

[quote="nathanarizona"]And the lyrics thing is so subjective - I always go by the following Freddie Mercury quote on that: "Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. Fuck them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If YOU see it, dear, then it's there."[/quote]

Awww, I really miss Freddie. And I totally agree, but that's why I prefer the more subtle lyrics. Just my personal preference. (Now I've got to go dig out some "Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke".)