Reggatta de Blanc

by

The Police

Edit

This digipak version of this great album is a real treat because they did a great job remastering this. The sound quality is very good and seems to have given the whole album a whole new lease of life; it's almost as if I'm listening to this for the first time.

Although many people like "Synchronicity" and probably first started being Police fans after that album, I was a fan from the early days when I first heard "Don't Stand So Close To Me" from the "Zenyatta Mondatta" album. The sounds I heard just blew me away; the uniqueness of the music and the fact that the band, almost zen-like, used like the Eastern artists do, no sound or silence as an important part of their music.

If you look at Eastern, Chinese or Japanese art, the space that is not painted on is just as important as the part that is painted. One could "over-paint" and destroy what would have been a great piece of art. Similarly in the music of the Police, you'll notice that the space or the parts without any music allows the tracks to breathe and the "spaci-ness" actually is a Police trademark and works very well for them; too many notes and it just wouldn't work.

Perfect examples of this are on "Walking On the Moon" and "The Bed's Too Big Without You." Contrast this with the more "busy" tracks like "Message In a Bottle" and "No Time This Time" and you'll see what I mean about like fine wine, letting the music breathe to attain maximum aural effect and The Police were masters at doing this.

From an overall great complete, coherent, flowing album perspective, this album is second only to "Zenyatta Mondatta" but miles ahead of "Synchronicity" which had great singles but sounds very disjointed as an overall album and truth be told had some pissed poor tracks like "Mother" and "Synchronicity 1" and if ever an album would have been better off with one less track, that one was it as "Murder By Numbers" although a great track on its own, should never have been on the album.

No weak tracks on this baby, though and given the great digipak packaging and the great remastered sound, this is the version that you should get. Highly recommended.

1979. The Police's second album was due. Would it be good - better than Outlandos? Were they a flash in the pan or something special? They had a new single due for release, and this would be the sign. One listen of the new single - "Message In A Bottle" - was enough to confirm that the Police were going to be a force to be reckoned with (no pun intended). That awesome guitar intro dragged you in, slapped you across the face and said "Pay attention, we're great and we're planning on stopping." The single was deceptive though, as the album was not as good as "Message" suggested. Like Outlandos, the great points of the album are truly great such as Sting's bassline on "Walking On The Moon". For us though, there are too many quirky songs. Stewart Copeland has three songs on the album, and one would have been enough. The vaudeville of "On Any Other Day" was never the Police to us - it should have been left to Klark Kent (alth! ough we quite liked "Contact"). The album showed that it was Sting that cut the mustard when it came to writing songs.