Synchronicity

Why it matters

The band that spent five albums fusing reggae and punk into something jittery and bright signed off with a record where the anxiety underneath finally surfaces and swallows the polish.

"Every Breath You Take" is the trick at the center: a wedding-dance staple that is actually a surveillance threat, its stalking possessiveness disguised by that circular, hypnotic guitar figure. Sting spends the rest of the album picking at dread rather than romance — the two-part title tracks pull Jung's coincidence theory into a suburban man's commuting nightmare, and "King Of Pain" turns personal misery into a catalog of grim omens. Copeland and Summers hold the whole thing taut when it could tip into melodrama, all clipped drums and shimmer. Three of the four members would never work together this way again, and you can hear the group already coming apart inside music this controlled.

Listen

Tracklist

1. 01Synchronicity I (Remastered 2003)3:23
2. 02Walking In Your Footsteps (Remastered 2003)3:37
3. 03O My God (Remastered 2003)4:02
4. 04Mother (Remastered 2003)3:06
5. 05Miss Gradenko (Remastered 2003)2:00
6. 06Synchronicity II (Remastered 2003)5:02
7. 07Every Breath You Take (Remastered 2003)4:14
8. 08King Of Pain (Remastered 2003)4:59
9. 09Wrapped Around Your Finger (Remastered 2003)5:14
10. 10Tea In The Sahara (Remastered 2003)4:19
11. 11Murder By Numbers (Remastered 2003)4:36