Riffiter on Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine is the Police album where the trio sound starts to fill up. Horns and keyboards come in, Sting sings over layers instead of space, and the songs get darker. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic is the obvious single and still a joy, but the heart of the record is Spirits in the Material World and Invisible Sun, a slow, heavy song about Northern Ireland that sounds nothing like Roxanne. Some of side two drifts, and Andy Summers gets less room than on the first three albums. It came out on Sting's 30th birthday and went to No. 1 in the UK, and you can hear the band growing into the bigger, colder sound of Synchronicity two years later.