The biggest thing that hit me - after purchasing the CD years after I lost the tape - is how well the production fits the music. Everything is so lush, its like stepping into infinite sonic space while bumping into pieces of sound floating all around you. The depth of this album is amazing. It, like Peter Gabriel's _Security_, was made for CD.

The songs - To me the only throwaway is "Murder by Numbers" - the definitive version of that song was done by Zappa on the "Broadway the Hard Way" (with Sting at the helm, of course). I think Summers is too clean and sloppy for this song to work. I love the arpeggiated riffing by Summers on "Miss Gradenko", and I must be the one person that loves the swirling, arabesque "Mother" - primarily because when you break down the music, its turns out to be a very cleverly disguised 12-bar blues riff! Such is the majesty of this album.

The best songs for your hi-fi have to be "Walking in Your Footsteps" and "Synchronicity II". The former sparkles and tantalizes with strange percussive synth noises (why does everything on this album sound so different from every synth-pop band of the same time frame? Its still modern after almost 15 years). The latter, a grungy, daring escape into pure musical darkness, is the best performance of the Police's - and especially Andy Summers' - careers. The feedback "guitar solo" and the ripping 16-th note solo that fades in at the end of this track are utterly gripping.

The best part about this album though, if you are a gloomy gus like me, is the lyrical work by Sting. The images in "King of Pain" stick with you long after the music leaves your mind - "A skeleton choking on a crust of bread" is my favorite. You don't have to be some erudite Jungian analyst to appreciate the sense of lyrical foreboding in "Synchronicity II" - the polemic dedicated/dessicating the the suburbanite animal is bitter and acidic in its exactness and realism. What does old Nessie have to do with Dad and Grandmother screaming at the wall? I don't know, I still don't know, but the song still sends a shiver up my spine 15 years after I first heard it.

Its a bona fide classic, like Zeppelin IV. Unlike that album though, repetitive play and ultimately time doesn't diminish its power. If you love music you simply must own this album. It is the definitive rock statement of the 80s, and one of the best rock albums ever made.