This two-disc set — the only official live release of the Police\u2019s short career — is a study in contrasts, in essence telling the story of the band between its lines. <\/p>\n
Live!<\/i> captures the Police at two distinct points in their career: disc one features a 1979 show at The 1979 show is all adrenalin and bravado, sometimes messy, never dull, a portrait of a band still proving itself nightly before club and theatre crowds.\u00a0 Breaks and solos are loose and energetic, background vocals from drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers are unpredictable, and tempos are often a step faster than the studio recordings, even on already-frantic rockers like the opening \u201cNext To You.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n The set list for the first disc is Outlandos D\u2019Amour<\/i> (the whole thing, even \u201cBe My Girl\/Sally\u201d) plus four tracks from Reggatta<\/i>, plus two early songs (the punky, frenetic \u201cFall Out\u201d and \u201cLandlord\u201d) that never made it onto a Police studio album.\u00a0 This keeps things fast and fun with\u00a0pedal-to-the-metal nuggets like \u201cTruth Hits Everybody,\u201d \u201cPeanuts\u201d and \u201cBorn In The 50s\u201d taking their place alongside the increasing sophistication seen in second-album cuts like \u201cWalking On The Moon\u201d and \u201cMessage In A Bottle.\u201d\u00a0 The emerging sound is perhaps most evident on \u201cThe Bed\u2019s Too Big Without You,\u201d which gets a stretched-out treatment rich with Summers\u2019 trembly reggae riffing and exotic soloing, matched by Copeland\u2019s complex, intricate rhythm work behind the kit. <\/p>\n The 1983 show spotlights the band at the height of both their commercial popularity and Sting\u2019s dominance within the band.\u00a0 The arrangements here are closer to Dream Of The Blue Turtles<\/i> jazz-pop than Outlandos D\u2019Amour<\/i> reggae-punk, adding a chorus of female background vocalists and smoothing\u00a0almost all the rough edges off these songs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n As might be expected, disc two consists primarily of Synchronicity <\/i>material, with just a couple of tracks each from the other four albums the band had out by then.\u00a0 Only four tracks are repeated from disc one — \u201cRoxanne, \u201cCan\u2019t Stand Losing You,\u201d \u201cMessage In A Bottle\u201d and \u201cSo Lonely\u201d — and in each case the difference is telling.\u00a0 The disc one versions burn with a loose, almost giddy energy; the disc two versions feel overly polished and tame by comparison.\u00a0 They\u2019re cleaner and crisper and subtler and about half as much fun. <\/p>\n Live!<\/i> is a substantially accurate portrait of the band at two distinct phases of its career.\u00a0 As such it\u2019s tough to rate, with disc one ranking high on energy\/fun and medium on technical\/production values, and disc two lagging on energy\/fun but stronger on the technical\/production side.\u00a0\u00a0 How much you enjoy this album will probably depend substantially on how you feel about the band\u2019s evolution and shifting internal dynamics.\u00a0 By my way of thinking, Sting fans will love disc two and Police fans will love disc one.\u00a0 If you love \u2019em both equally, then you\u2019ll probably rate this higher than I do\u2026 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7080],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40327","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-police","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40327"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40327"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}