This is part of a series of mini-reviews of The Police’s studio albums, ranked worst to best. (Don’t worry; I’ll keep them short.)
I love The Police so much that when the boxed set Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings was released in 1993, I bought it even though I owned every album on it. (It helped that I had only bought one or two on CD.)
It’s not complete, of course. These things never are. But it has a lot of otherwise uncollected songs, which I will now quickly review.
Fall Out/Nothing Achieving: Their first single, before Andy Summers joined Sting and Stewart. Henri Padovani, their original guitarist, is present. Copeland wrote both sides. It’s a very punk sound, but it has good energy.
Dead End Job: Written by all three Police members. Again, that punk sound and attitude. A B-side.
Landlord: Another B-side. Not particularly memorable. Performed live with Next To You at the Bottom Line in 1979; those live recordings prove that The Police were just as great onstage as in the studio.
Visions Of The Night: Sting’s first title was Three O’Clock Shit, because he’s waxing philosophical. It’s a neat tune.
The Bed’s Too Big Without You (Mono): A great alternate version of the song from Regatta de Blanc.
Truth Hits Everybody (Live): Marvelous recording of an average song. See my comment above.
Friends: A B-side. Andy Summers being weird with Stranger In A Strange Land for inspiration. Ugh.
A Sermon: B-side authored by Stewart Copeland. Pretty good but not overly memorable.
Driven To Tears (Live): See previous comments about live material. They were awesome.
Shambelle: An instrumental. Magnificent playing by all three.
Flexible Strategies: An instrumental, improvised for a B-side. It’s good.
Low Life: The Police with a saxophone solo?!? Just…no.
How Stupid Mr. Bates: From the Brimstone and Treacle soundtrack. One of their best instrumentals, IMO.
A Kind Of Loving: Another instrumental from the B&T soundtrack.
Murder By Numbers: This was actually added to Synchronicity because people loved it so much. OK. I’m not crazy about it, myself, but I can live with it.
Man In A Suitcase (Live): See previous comments. In fact, I won’t bother discussing the other included live tracks except to say they’re worth hearing.
Someone To Talk To: Andy Summers’ best Police song. It actually sounds normal! And creepy in a good way.
I Burn For You: One of the group’s best overlooked songs. It’s fantastic. From the B&T soundtrack.
Once Upon A Daydream: A rare collab between Sting and Summers. It’s a great one. Very spooky.
Don’t Stand So Close To Me ’86: I actually wrote a previous OT about this remake. It’s not anywhere near as good as the original version, but it’s a neat listen. The Police’s last studio recording.
