The Police is a group, like Steely Dan, whose music makes you change speeds when one of their songs comes on your car radio. Clean, direct choruses that keep your ears blinking to attention, emotional hooks every 30 seconds, and lushly produced melodies make both groups irresistible. With the release of Ghost In The Machine, their fourth album, the Police prove they're able to merge diverse pop idioms into complex music that will carry a mass audience where the group wants to take them….

Sting, Summers, and Copeland use any means at their disposal to create vital contemporary music….

Rehumanize Yourself, [for example], throws everything in—sirens, synthesizer tremolos, racing guitars—to advise wayward youths and the authorities alike: "Policeman put on his uniform / He'd like to have a gun just to keep him warm / Cause violence here is a social norm / You got to humanize yourself." With songs like this and the mystic cymbal/tape magic reggae-like One World, the Police add an evangelical fervor to their exploitation of electronics, hoping to wrench the ghost out of the machine.