Police – Synchronicity (180g Vinyl LP)

Like it’s predecessor, Ghost In The Machine, the Synchronicity album was recorded on Montserrat although writing for the album started as early as 1982 when Sting was staying in Jamaica. The band gathered on Montserrat in December 1982 with producer Hugh Padgham, each bringing in their own songs. It was important to Sting, that Synchronicity sounded different. “There were a lot of clone groups who sounded like us coming up, so it was important that we didn’t manufacture the kind of album where we all played our favourite licks. I felt the songs I wrote were different, so the playing had to be different,” he said.

So the multi-layered sound of the previous album was stripped away and made more minimal. “I ultimately thought it sounded better that way. I can remove things without feeling threatened. I think it’s my function to vanish behind the handiwork, in a sense, and just let it stand on its own,” was how Sting saw it. “I think we’d become so refined as a group of musicians that we realised that the three instruments just playing solo and ensemble was perhaps the best way of doing it – and it just seemed to happen. The songs worked with three instruments. There were lots of overdubs, but the overall feel was spartan.”

Synchronicity of course was huge. It shot to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and just stayed there – 8 weeks in the UK and 17 in the US. But the success had its downside. Seven months later the band played a final concert in Australia and went their separate ways. The Police had the courage to say goodbye at the very peak of their commercial and artistic abilities.

1. Synchronicity I
2. Walking in Your Footsteps
3. O My God
4. Mother
5. Miss Gradenko
6. Synchronicity II
7. Every Breath You Take
8. King of Pain
9. Wrapped Around Your Finger
10. Tea in the Sahara