The Police: Synchronicity Super Deluxe Edition (Music Monday)
40 years later, the Police release something 'new'
The reason I have been writing about The Police for a month and a half has arrived. The Synchronicity Super Deluxe Edition.
Synchronicity is weird. It might be the best Police album. It might be the worst Police album. It doesn’t sound like the first three albums, but it does sound like half of Ghost In The Machine (and the other half of Ghost sounds like the first three albums).
It has the three mega-hits, and one of the biggest songs of all time in Every Breath You Take, and yet I tend to gravitate toward the more interesting Side 1.
What’s interesting to me about the three singles, is how the bridge saves all three. Every Breath You Take without Sting going up and singing “Since you’ve gone….” would just be a plodding song. King of Pain is OK, but it’s the extra oomph of “There's a king on a throne with his eyes torn out…” that next-level’s the song. Similarly, Wrapped Around Your Finger could be a boring ol’ song on Ten Summoners Tales except for Stewart Copeland banging the drums in the Alabaster section.
On to the new release…
Starting with the original album, I think the tracks that were helped the most were the “lesser” tracks of Walking In Your Footsteps and Tea In The Sahara. Sting’s bass stands out more, and I think it greatly helps both songs.
As I listen to the album, you can almost hear Sting go solo after the bridge on King of Pain. The back end of the album - Wrapped Around Your Finger, Sahara and Murder By Numbers - would have sat comfortably on any Sting solo album. Conversely, if Synchronicity had say Children’s Crusade or Russians in the Sahara slot, neither would sound out of place. Sting going solo will be a theme that comes up as we dive into the outtakes.
The new mix on King of Pain caught my ears, as the piano now sits “outside” (wide-mix) of the drums.
Disc 2 is an odd-ball collections of odds and ends, all of which you have if you are a major Police fan who has been scrounging scraps since 1983, but it’s nice to have them all in one place.
Disc 3 is outtakes, one of which blew my mind. You mean there’s been a “Stevie Wonder” version of O My God sitting in a drawer for 40 years?????
My one disappointment is Miss Grandenko. I saw this on the trail list and was sure I would finally get to hear the song with Stewart Copeland on vocals, but nope, it’s Gordon. I will have to continue to scrape by with the Gizmodrome version with SC singing. (Man, this is good…)
The demo version of Synchronicity II is amazingly realized, and a good example of “maybe Sting doesn’t need these guys.” You can understand why Sting might be thinking, why am I fighting over every song?
As exciting as it is to have “new” material after 40 years, listening to multiple demos of songs does get fatiguing, so it may be a better experience to bounce around.
Next up are some outtakes - I was hoping maybe we’d get one more Police song out of these, but they are largely fragments and jams, except for Goodbye Tomorrow which is the Andy Summers b-side Someone To Talk To with better lyrics..
It’s a nice solid third-tier Police song, and probably should have gotten the slot on the album that went to the horrendous track Mother.
I keep hoping that some day somehow we get a 6th Police album. I hear things like Sting’s “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You” and Stewart/Klark Kent’s :”It’s Gonna Rain” and I hear pieces of what could have been a Police album Could Sting sing Goodbye Tomorrow, maybe with a third set of lyrics? There’s an album to be had, but again, if you’re Sting, why bother with the other two?
The final disc is a Synchronicity live show which I haven’t gotten to yet - but my experience with that tour is the band has never sounded…worse. The raw power of yje young trio is sort of stadium-sized with cheesy backup singing and it just doesn’t work.
Is this box-set AMAZING? No. And I feel bad waiting 40 years saying that, but the reality is the cupboards are pretty bare and while outtakes are fun, there’s nothing revelatory like some of the Beach Boys sets that have come out.
That said, whatever else is in a drawer somewhere, please release it. There is evidence of plenty of live shows out there, there definitely Ghost In The Machine demos and outtakes (see YouTube) and I’d like to find out what outtakes there are from that Zenyatta periods.
If you live long enough, eventually the Police release something. Hang in there!