[If the Police display a certain] stylish art-rock elegance, their music still sounds unpolished and sometimes mean enough to let them pass for part-time members of the New Wave—even though it's a brand of New Wave sufficiently watered down to allow these guys to become today's AOR darlings. And yet their hybrid of influences has been fused into a streamlined, scrappy style, held together by the kind of knotty, economical hooks that make a song stick out on the radio. Musically, Outland...

One of the most exciting groups to slither out of the U.K. in the last five years, the Police are a harried hybrid of recent musical trends. They mesh hard rock with reggae rhythm, punk power, pop melody and Monty Python poetry to create a sound that is as distinctively exuberant as it is unnerving. At first listen, the Police sound like just a decent, melodic rock outfit. A few spins of [Outlandos D'Amour] later, one realizes the true dementia of the band…. [The songs are catchy] and crazy. &...

The Police's first album ["Outlandos d'Amour"] showed an exciting rock band with reggae inclinations that could kill with two songs but barely get off the ground with the remainder. On their second album ["Reggatta de Blanc"] they've forsaken most of their rock base and turned strictly into a reggae band with white faces, and unfortunately the move doesn't work to their advantage. The lack of consistency becomes even more apparent, and while Sting�...