On the other hand, however, their individualistic fusion of polished reggae, bathroom-echo dub, Andy Summer's
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Jeff Beckcum-Ramones guitar thrash and Sting's inverted pop hooks is too often filed under "FM punk." In a world reeling from the gang of Four's leftist rants and Talking Head's future-funk experiments, the Police - like the similarly maligned Cars, Blondie and Joe Jackson - are accused of being homogenized New Wave: i.e., it sounds good on a car radio, and you can sing it in the shower.
"Zenyattá Mondatta closes any such credibility gap with class and a vengeance. On one level, the current album is an engaging aural travelogue of the Anglo-American power trio's Near and Far East tour (its title is more of the Police's pidgin-English wordplay, bastardizing Zen, Jomo Kenyatta and monde, the French word for world). These guys continue to indulge their love for reggae, thinly disguising Stewart Copeland's tight, choppy, neo-roots drumming with Sting's airy vocal harmonies and Andy Summer's ringing guitar harmonics in the overtly pop-style classroom love story, "Don't Stand So Close to Me," and the brooding "Driven to Tears. "They also dabble in ska: "Canary in a Coalmine" and Sting's witty rewrite of the time-worn rock-star-on-the-road blues, "Man in a Suitcase."
More obvious are the influences of India, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern music and atmosphere. In "Bombs Away," Summers takes a raveup solo that mixes hot rock chops with exotic modal progressions. The result sounds like an outtake from the "Midnight Express" soundtrack. Ethnomusicologists will note the similarity between the "Hey!" choruses of "Voices inside My Head" and the traditional Balinese monkey chant. Come to think of it, Sting's high-pitched singing has never been that far removed from the Moslem call to prayer.
On another, more immediate level, "Zenyattá Mondatta" offers near-perfect pop by a band that bends all the rules and sometimes makes musical mountains out of molehill-size ideas. Like "Reggatta de Blanc's" "Walking on the Moon" and "The Bed's Too Big Without You" the new LP's "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" is based on a hypnotic three-chord progression that's repeated for almost four minutes. But the subtly dramatic rises and falls of Sting's vocal, the ricochet effect of Summers' reverberating guitar and Co
