Welcome to this week's edition of Record of the Week. Somehow, we're out here still rollin' along. This week, the Randomizer serves up a 1981 classic, The Police's Ghost in the Machine. This is the copy that's on my turntable as I'm typing this out. I picked this up for $7 during lockdown when I decided to make it my mission to get all the Police records for less than $10/each. I only remember because the sticker is still on it. So, yeah, shout out to Econo Jam Records in Oakland who played a big role in completing my mission. They also helped me out when I did the same for Steely Dan.
Okay, so, this record. My friends and I, we were there almost at the beginning. Outlandos d'Amour. Reggatta de Blanc. Zenyatta Mondatta. Someone in our group had found this band somewhere between the first two albums, and those records got heavy rotation. Those albums were (and still are) great.
Up to this point, those first three albums were a raw mix of punk, reggae and new wave. Like, you could put the three dudes in a room and had them play the songs, they'd probably sound pretty much the same as what you hear on the album.
This fourth album was a change. It sounded bigger and fuller. There were more keyboards, synths and saxophones. It still sounded like them, but with these extra things layered on top. Almost like an alien landscape. While it was a big leap in sound, Ghost in the Machine fits neatly alongside the others if you listen to them in order of release. You can hear the natural growth to this point.
The album is filled with variations on themes of emotional isolation (Darkness), political unrest (Invisible Sun) and technology overload (Too Much Information). Every Little Thing She Does is Magic is kind of an outlier on the album because it felt like an obvious swing for a hit (we were so anti-chart music back then), but you know what, it's a fucking great song. The bittersweet lyrics, however, really make it a Police song. They're so good at that shit and, at this point 40-something years later, the song is a straight up classic.
80s production aside, this album would still resonate if it was made today. People are still writing songs about this same shit. Ghost in the Machine is still a Police album like the preceding three albums, but older and (presumably) wiser. Those angry upstart punks, those dudes are gone.
The previous album got them off the ground and this one shot them into the sky. And the next one, the biggest (and final) Police album (Synchronicity), would catapult them to the stars. Thinking out loud a bit, I feel like there is a correlation here if you look at Zenyatta > Ghost > Synchronicity. Then take U2 with War > Unforgettable Fire > Joshua Tree. Or R.E.M. with Document > Green > Out of Time. Just similar trajectories.
Anyways, The Police were one of the biggest bands of that early/mid-80s era. Me and my friends would get to see them on that tour. That was really fucking cool. At the time, we didn't know it was the end, but what an album to go out on. But that's another story, maybe the Randomizer will make it happen.