Police - Ghost In The Machine [Digipak]
![Ghost In The Machine [Digipak]](/images/Ghost-In-The-Machine-Digipak-B00008BRDW-L.jpg)
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Category: Music CD
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CD Details
Artist: PoliceEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-03-04
Music Label: Interscope Records
Soundtracks:
- Spirits In The Material World
- Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
- Invisible Sun
- Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)
- Demolition Man
- Too Much Information
- Rehumanize Yourself
- One World (Not Three)
- Omegaman
- Secret Journey
- Darkness
Music reviews of Ghost In The Machine [Digipak]
Music Review: The Best Police Album
Rating: 5 Stars
Unlike other albums by the Police, Ghost in the Machine has no weak songs. Don't believe me? Let's go one by one. And I'll even talk about the concept behind the album: the loss of humanity, individuality, and personal confidence by living in the modern world.
"Spirts in the Material World" opens the album with the words "There is no political solution..." -- these words hold true for everything put forward in the album. We are used to looking to government for the answers to all our problems. But government as it is today is a cause: "Our so-called leaders speak -- with words they try to jail ya. They subjugate the meek -- but it's the rhetoric of failure" [one of my favorite rhymes ever!] From birth we are told to be afraid of acting on our own judgement and to do as others tell us. Presumably their judgement is better than ours, even as they are being told the same thing...This song has a strange, haunting sound that makes it my second-favorite on the album.
"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" has mistakenly been called irrelevant to the rest of the album by others here. If the rest of the album is the theory, this is the practice: a man, taught like the rest of us to feel only fear and to act only in submission, cannot even work up the courage to talk to a girl he loves -- cannot even call her. Yet it is also, as some have written, a perfect pop song -- and I would add, with the perfect verse (at least Sting thinks so -- he has reused it a few times): "Do I have to tell the story/Of a thousand rainy days since we first met?/It's a big enough umbrella/But it's always me that ends up getting wet."
"Invisible Sun," banned in the UK for references in the video to Northern Ireland, is another solid song, sung by someone trapped in a warzone. He just hopes to come out alive -- "I don't ever want to play the part of a statistic on a government chart" but maintains his belief, presumably against that of both sides fighting this war, that all human lives are valuable -- "There has to be an invisible sun that gives its heat to everyone."
"J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi" and "Demolition Man" are pretty enjoyable, despite the former being in French, which I don't know quite well enough to understand in the song (read a translation -- the lyrics are quite good) and the latter being somewhat repetitive. There's even more repetition in "Too Much Information" but here it might have a purpose -- making us question if all the information we get today (and how much more it is than in 1981, when this album was released!) is really increasing our knowledge, or just "driving [us] insane."
"Rehumanize Yourself" shows a few characters in our society -- a boy in a street gang who "kicks a boy to death 'cause he don't belong," (in what way he "didn't belong" is unmentioned, and irrelevant) a policeman wishing for violence, "a social norm," a member of an extremist political party chanting slogans, and the narrator, who "work[s] all day in the factory/Building a machine that's not for me." The song repeats "Rehumanize yourself" speaking to the listener as well as everyone in the song.
"One World (Not Three)" attacks the concept of a third world separate from those of us in the first world. "We can all sink or we all float/'Cause we're all in the same big boat." It's easy and convenient to think at any level, as so many do, that because the "third world" is underdeveloped, the people there are inherently worse or stupider, or incapable of raising their standard of living. Saying a problem is unsolvable is a good way of "shelving one's responsibility," as the song says, to solve it.
OK, I have no idea what "Omegaman" is about, but it's certainly an energetic song with pounding drums. "Secret Journey" isn't too clear either, but it's my favorite song from this album. The chorus, the lines "And when you've made your secret journey/You will be a holy man," and the music that resembles that of another of my favorite songs by the Police, "King of Pain."
"Darkness," a great closer, is at last clear -- it's easy to dream, but when you "get to your feet" and try to pursue dreams, they seem unattainable. This can be so disappointing and frustrating that, as the narrator laments as the album fades out "I wish I never woke up this morning/Life was easy when it was boring..." When dreams are far away, a life without dreams can be a painkiller, or so the narrator imagines...These simple but powerful words close one of the best albums I've ever listened to.
This album gets a 5/5 from me all the way through. It has no weak points, and some very strong points (Spirits in the Material World, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, Rehumanize Yourself, the last three songs.)
Description of Ghost In The Machine [Digipak]
Japanese-only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) pressing of this rock album. SHM-CDs can be played on any audio player and delivers unbelievably high-quality sound. You won't believe it's the same CD! Universal. 2008.Dark, somber, and thematically unified as no previous album by the Police, Ghost in the Machine deals almost exclusively with the negative effects of modern political and technological culture. The only departure from this focus is "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," a perfect pop song and radio hit. Elsewhere, the album treats such issues as the hope underlying resistance to oppression, the dismissal of most of the nonindustrialized world, the daily bombardment of words and images that overload the senses, and the frequent recourse to violence for personal or political expression. The songs are presented in what are, for the Police, unusually dense, layered arrangements. Andy Summers's guitar lines are even more ethereal than usual, with Sting's bass parts bobbing in a mix seasoned with keyboards and sax and propelled by Stewart Copeland's unmistakable, idiosyncratic drumming. While Synchronicity gave the Police their greatest success with hits and videos, Ghost in the Machine is the band's best recording. --Albert Massa
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