#39: The Police - Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine is generally agreed to be the Police's weakest record, and that's a pretty accurate assertion. Aside from the one-two opening punch of "Spirits in the Material World" and "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic," there's not much worth giving a damn about on this record, and not much of it is being revisited on the band's most recent tour.

It's been very interesting to watch the reactions towards the reunion tour evolve - at first, everyone was shitting bricks about the band getting back together. The idea of hearing "Message in a Bottle" put together by the original three dudes was a tremendous proposition, no matter what you're interested in. But by the time the tour rolled around to Dallas, there was too much consternation about slowed-down songs, destroyed moods, and, when it got down to it, tremendous boredom. So even though there were twenty-dollar tickets left an hour or two before showtime, I skipped out.

Really, Ghost in the Machine wouldn't have had much to do with my enjoyment of the show, and I suppose that's part of the point of this review - this is likely the least essential Police record, and even though it has two great songs, the rest is a huge dose of filler that doesn't do anything for the band's legacy. When I was a kid, this was the only Police record we had on vinyl, which was an accident anyway, because we determined my dad's sister had left it behind, without the packaging, nonetheless. So I remember just listening to the first two tracks and skipping the rest - even as a twelve year old, I knew what Stewart Copeland and Co. knew in 1981 - that this was some mediocre shit. So without dragging much more into this, I'll just assert that Ghost in the Machine was a pretty stale record that led into the additionally uninteresting Synchronicity, and makes it clear that the early Police records were infinitely superior.

"Every Little Thing She Does is Magic"