The Police
Elvis Costello and the Imposters
May 13, 2008
The Sprint Center
Better Than: A backstage fight with Stewart Copeland
Photos by SCOTT SPYCHALSKI
Click the photo to view slideshow.
Real rockers know things about couture (and music) that most musicians don't. To project experience and confidence, you can't just start, say, wearing goofy hats. It takes growling swagger. Tailored tank tops. Bespoke suits. The occasional refusal to make a good album. And when the junior rockers, even some of the better acts, look barely qualified to sack your groceries, a night out with a couple of cocksure frontmen unashamed to own the store -- fuck your coupons -- feels especially potent.
Also, it helps if the other musicians onstage are world-class.
The Police, whose bass player and principal songwriter, Sting, reconvened the band in 2007, last night defined assurance for a sold-out Sprint Center. Elvis Costello, opening the show with his three-man Imposters, already knew the word.
Costello and the band, all heavy tremolo and mean reverb, tunneled their way into nearly half his new Momofuku (if it doubled up a couple of consonants, it could almost be a vintage Police album title) and back out through noir-pop standards "Watching the Detectives" and "Less Than Zero." Long-limbed Pete Thomas hunched over his drums as though ducking sniper fire, and keyboard player Steve Nieve squeezed 96 tears out of 61 organ keys, periodically waving his hands over his short stack of gizmos like a magician about to saw a woman in half.
Whereas the Police's catalog remains preserved in amber, Costello continues to weave in and out of the sound that best suits him, his eyes darting behind amber-tinted lenses. With a new album in stores and plenty of reissues marking his third trip to the magical remastering fairyland, he couldn't have made a savvier move than taking this tour's opening slot. At the Sprint Center, goodwill and expectation for the Police spilled over, and a chunk of the sold-out crowd treated Costello as a headliner.
The highlight of his 50-minute set was "Everyday I Write the Book," a mass-market paperback of a single in a smart hardcover rebinding. It was a canny choice for this brief set, a postcard from the summer of 1983, when Costello's Punch the Clock and the Police's Synchronicity bookended the season.
At the first words of "Alison," Costello's "Candle in the Wind," the two middle-aged men in the row ahead of me exchanged an impassioned high-five. Their wives left them alone to fetch beer -- and missed Sting, who strode onstage in a $5 hat and a grizzly salt-and-pepper beard to sing the choruses with Costello. Between Sting's untrimmed whiskers and Costello's truck-stop sideburns, the pair looked like they'd just returned from a long camping trip together. Costello kicked the Imposters into the new "Go Away" as soon as Sting left. Subtle.
At 8:48, just 20 minutes after Costello left the stage, the lights dimmed again, and Sting, perched on a stool and playing a small acoustic guitar, led the Police into a chaste "Bring on the Night." Only one other time last night did the band win on song choice rather than song delivery. With the next number, "Message in a Bottle," Sting plugged his magnet into a superconducting core: guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland. Even the least of the show's remaining songs generated meltdown wattage.
Copeland, jaw thrust out like a comic-book crime fighter's, pushed every song with brutal efficiency. The golf-ball dimples on his cymbals told a story only hinted at by his headband.
With the doomsday suite from Zenyatta Mondatta -- "Voices Inside My Head, "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" and "Driven to Tears" -- Sting revisited his greatest muse, nuclear annihilation, with the bounce of someone who recognizes a different judgment day on the horizon. The earnest geopolitics of his solo material hasn't weakened the trigger finger of this dilettante's dilettante after all. It's 3 a.m. Who do you want to answer that red phone?
Some songs suffered from the studied offhandedness of their arrangements. "Don't Stand So Close to Me" bobbed along in a shallow holding pattern like a tentative blow job, and the sunny, elevated-key ending of "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" needlessly complicated an ode to simplicity.
Later, a static "Invisible Sun" held its melody at arm's length. Accompanied by video stills of refugee camps, it was the night's only real misstep. Over Sting's sung calls of Someday, images of fearful children gave way to smiling faces, an incongruous choice that struck fear into the hearts of anyone hoping never to hear the Police play "Fragile."
The elaborate percussion rig that rose behind Copeland's drum set for some songs looked like a hubcap store for little Shriner cars. The tiny bells and fat tympani worked best on a stately "Wrapped Around Your Finger." The song offered the most convincing makeover of the set: a threat of erotic vengeance dimmed to the memory of a long-ago pyrrhic victory.
(When it comes to whores, though, Sting remains a diplomat, not a pimp killer. Post-gangsta-rap, his plea to Roxanne to put away her makeup might be the most optimistic arrow in his Cupid's quiver.)
There are two ways to play "Every Breath You Take": as a hit or as an encore. Twenty-five years after the song was a radio monster, even the reunited Police must opt for the latter. Summers assumed rightful ownership (for an idea of his importance to the song -- and an explanation of just what makes a great song into an amazing record -- see this indispensable piece) and then kept the reins for the finale, an exuberant "Next to You."
The visual effects -- Ghost in the Machine's cover logo superimposed over the video feed in an unbroken helix, Sting's first HD-monitor close-up in Ingmar Bergman black-and-white, a HEPA filter of a lighting rig suspended over the stage -- were strictly basic cable. But keeping the emphasis on the three players, with frequent loving shots of their fingers and hands on their instruments, heightened the sense of witnessing something streamlined and unforced. Though the band announced last week that it was taking its act off the road for good, last night's show didn't feel valedictory. It felt like three bad motherfuckers asserting their primacy on a Tuesday night.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: If lip-synching "Next to You" while writing this review is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Random Detail: Andy Summers' in-ear monitors were bright green -- as was the skaterlike pattern on his sneakers.
By the way: Was "Demolition Man" a shout-out to deadbeat political prisoner Wesley Snipes, co-star of '90s stinker Demolition Man?
Setlists:
Elvis Costello and the Imposters
Stella Hurt
Pump It Up
Everyday I Write the Book
American Gangster Time
Less Than Zero
Flutter & Wow
No Hiding Place
Turpentine
Watching the Detectives
Alison
Go Away
(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding
The Police
Bring on the Night
Message in a Bottle
Walking on the Moon
Demolition Man
Voices Inside My Head (intro)
When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
Don't Stand So Close to Me
Driven to Tears
So Lonely
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Can't Stand Losing You (including Reggatta de Blanc)
Encore:
Roxanne
King of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
Second Encore:
Next to You
Showing 1-12 of 12
Elvis opening for Stink? Are concert goers running from the Police? I heard Beethoven is opening for John Tesh in Philly next May.
I saw the show at the hollywood bowl and thought Elvis Costello was amazing. The sound wasn't that great in the venue but he put on an amazing show. If you aren't able to see him live then you should check out Topher Mohr who really reminds me of Elvis Costello. He is amazing live and he is touring right now. Check out if he is going to be in your town at www.tophermohr.com
great review - i guess it was very similar to the Hollywood Bowl show last night. althoug i have to say that the "every breath you take" encore was remarkable - truly spectacular. hearing the whole Bowl sing it togetehr was something i won't forget! long live the policee!!
there's a funny, pretty accurate review of it from this guy:
http://lostinasupermarket.com/...
I agree almost completely with Herman except for the hint at Mr. Wilson's use of dictionary.com. I suspect instead that Mr. Wilson's middle-finger is constantly wore out from right-clicking and selecting a synonym.
Bottom line is this was the most poorly written article I have read since my 15-year-old was trying to get ahead in her AP English class.
Two words of advice Mr. Wilson - Eschew Obfuscation.
How long have you been waiting to work the phrase "pyrrhic victory" into a review?...Forgive the hyperbole, but this is probably the most overwritten review I've ever read in the pitch, or anywhere else. Certainly your vocabulary is impressive (or at the least your ability to pluck from dictionary.com). And I'm sure Stewart Copeland will appreciate the sentence "The golf-ball dimples on his cymbals told a story only hinted at by his headband" when you send him the first chapter of your proposed biography. But please, spare the rest of us from your masturbatory literary self-indulgence.
Great show. But... from the cheap seats the mix was lousy during Elvis Costello. The kick drum was way out of proportion to everything else; and tended to drown out everything else.
sad to see that 'don't stand so close' to me is still as terrible as it was in st. louis. after playing it a hundred times, you'd think the band would work out the kinks.
i quibble that it was a tentative blowjob, however; when i saw it, it was more akin to fumbling, drunken sex.
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