Synchronicity, for
all its power trio posings, is at its core a singer/songwriter LP. The
instrumentation is stark and exotic, sometimes eerie, and the production values
exemplary, Hugh Padham proving he was up to scratch, creating a gorgeous, brooding sonic masterpiece, but
it's the lyrics that propel Synchronicity into the top spot
for '83. Sting's storytelling prowess was never greater (more amusing maybe on Nothing
Like the Sun and Ten Summoner’s Tales, but far less
poetic). Tears for Fears garnered the same thoughtfulness, but no one, not even
Springsteen, not Dylan, was more introspective: "There's a little black
spot on the sun today (that's my soul up there)./ There's a flag pole rag and
the wind won't stop (that's my soul up there)/ There's a king on a throne with
his eyes torn out/ There's a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt,/ There's
a rich man sleeping on a golden bed,/ There's a skeleton choking on a crust of
bread." The lines are delivered with ironic flair, as if The Police were
daring the doomsayers of the 20th century to take heart and find energy and
hope anywhere they could.
From Summers' misaligned "Mother," a brilliant rubric against
the underlying musical simplicity, to the eerie percussion of "Walking in
Your Footsteps" (Copeland's finest moment, incorporating a prehistoric
musical montage with Summers' sparse distant guitar swatches), Synchronicity
was a group effort that effectively destroyed the unit while reifying The
Police at their best. The dark, lyrical imagery in "King of Pain," and the contrasting verses in "Synchronicity II" capture perfectly
the hell that is modern industrial society, with frightening allusions to
the Loch Ness Monster shadowing a Scottish cottage or a grandmother
screaming at the wall. (And in unison, like we were in church, we all sing "Shiny metal boxes," accentuating, as Sting does, the t in metal.
The gentle soft-rock mock-ballad "Every Breath She Takes" with its arpeggiated chords belies the dark underbelly of Sting's lyrics;
essentially the anthem of a stalker. Predatory though the lyrics may be, the
melody in his delivery and the overall structure make it the most accessible
song the band ever released. (And couldn't it just have been about love? –
There's the poignancy.)
The album is so consistently brilliant on so many levels one
can easily overlook Sting's intellectual pretensions on songs like
"Synchronicity I": "If we share this nightmare,/ Then we can
dream Spiritus Mundi" and on, "Walking in Your Footsteps”: "You
consider me the young apprentice, caught between the Scylla and
Charybdis." Or you may find it pure genius.
A lot of music critics were polarized by this
album; I find the controversy hogwash. The fact is that it not only holds up to
the music of its time, it transcends the pop niche and explodes into the
popular consciousness of rock music. Musically as well, the band moves in new
directions, incorporating a wide array of keyboard effects and percussion, all
of which add to the sense of unease found in the music. Only in the trance-like "Tea in The Sahara," in which the band reverts to its standard 3-piece format,
is the listener afforded a release from the ever-escalating tension. Yet,
despite its obvious strengths, the band could not quell the rising tides of
dissent within its own ranks, as the trio's strongly conflicting personalities
led to an all-too sudden demise. Synchronicity, the band's 5th
album, was both a critical and commercial peak and ultimately their farewell.
There was a Tiny Naylor's drive-in restaurant on Sunset and La Brea, and hanging over it one of the few rock billboards not on the Strip. I remember sitting in the drive-in, Tiny Naylor’s about to close for good, and the billboard above it was Synchronicity. It wasn’t one of my father's, he’d already moved on, opened an art collective in the ghost town of Jerome, Arizona. Or he may have been dead, I don’t remember, but I had a vision of him up there painting away. Maybe that melancholy vision pushed me away from the LP, IDK, but it wasn't for years that I truly embraced this LP. I'm embarrassed.