'Police' get away with murder; and it works...
At first glance, the Police are a joke. They are blond Englishmen who sing lyrics full of supermarket philosophy in fake Jamaican accents, and somebody should sit them down and explain just how silly the whole act is. White
washing the music of a Third World culture isn't the best way to garner much respect.
It does garner tons of success, though the Police are one of the biggest bands in Europe these days, and their stature in America is growing steadily.
Austin's teen-agers turned out In all their finery to see the Police Tuesday at the City Coliseum, so the group must have more going for them than a slick sound and a matinee idol for a lead singer, right?
Maybe. Their music was almost all surface, and every hokey bit in the book was dragged out. Phased guitar, echoed vocals, tape loops, and synthesizer doodles made the show a regular electronic rummage sale. And their idea of a good chant is "oh-ee-oh" repeated about a thousand times.
But under all the gimmicks was the reason they pleased the crowd so much - good tunes, driving choruses and a solid knack for rhythm and dynamics. Their habit of halting a song's momentum by dropping back to quasi-reggae verses Couldn't disguise the fact that 'Roxanne', 'Can't Stand Losing You', 'Be My Girl - Sally', and especially 'So Lonely' are all wonderful teen love laments.
The best parts of those tunes lived up well to the old American Bandstand criterion: They had a great beat that you could dance to.
The Police are the Tommy James & the Shondells of the '80s, wrapping musical candy clusters around a core of purest bubblegum.
XTC, who opened the show, also use a lot of gimmicks, but to a more pointed effect. Their bag of tricks is rarely put to work as surface gloss, and usually the effects fit right into the bones of the song at hand.
'Real by Real' may have sounded like it was performed by an edgy British rock'n'roll band with an ear for hooks, but XTC are gripped by a deep-seated goofiness that makes them write a song com- paring a girl to a helicopter and has Andy Partridge warbling like a maniac half the time.
But XTC's loony humour works hand in hand with the music, too. A song like "Life Begins At the Hop" is both a tongue-in- cheek ditty about rock rituals and a terrific dance number. XTC does just about everything: Fractured verses played off against a rushing chorus, perfectly sung melodic harmonies, thrilling guitar leads, sustained climaxes, electronic sound washes, and deadpan political jive ('Take Me to Another Cuba').
They only fail when they try for too much at once, and Tuesday night they didn't fail very often at all.
(c) Austin American Statesman by Chris Walters
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