Sandinista!

It wasn't until I listened to all The Clash's albums in order, one after another, that I appreciated London Calling. It came right after an album that started strong until it descended into a series sour lectures from Joe Strummer on what all the new punks were doing (crazy kids!) that play even worse when you actually READ the lyrics. After this, The Clash just goes out and creates a sprawling but disciplined double-album masterpiece that is strong on all the basics--the songwriting and musicianship are just top notch, and everything is just so polished, but not to the extent of being airless or unfun. A proper masterpiece.Sandinista! is often superficially compared to London Calling. Both albums feature a diverse set of experiments in genre-mixing, but other than that they're opposites. London Calling exudes control, tunefulness, and even stability in a way (despite the album's apocalyptic touches). Sandinista! is the opposite: where London Calling is controlled, Sandinista! is out of control. Where London Calling couches its politics in tasteful and tongue-in-cheek contexts (You don't need the laundry, you can take it to the vet!), Sandinista! puts all of it out there plainly and baldly. Where London Calling is cool, Sandinista! is pulsating with white-hot energy. And so on. The closer the examination gets, the more it becomes clear that this improvised, sometimes shrugged-off, dramatic effort is not a case of aping London Calling with diminishing returns, but rather a deliberate departure by the group to try to find a new way of expressing themselves to keep from descending into staleness (as the latter half of Give 'Em Enough Rope threatened to do).Of this album's flaws enough has been said already. Too long, too dense, not enough material to justify the length, would have played great as a double-album or even an LP. Some of it is even true. By my count there are only really 2.5 albums worth of viable material here out of the original three, what between the five final tedious dub tracks and the worthless "Mensforth Hill" (which happens to be "Something About England" played backward, obvious filler), and even that 2.5 is quite a bit to absorb. The process of recording the album led to something a lot less consistently great than London Calling. It's hard to justify calling it the better album, because that's just not true. But it's long been my favorite because, despite the occasional misses ("Crooked Beat" and "Equalizer" for example) and other songs where the musical concepts just don't quite cohere right, the times when it hits are simply astonishing. A song like "One More Time", which (probably intentionally) evokes Elvis's "In The Ghetto", could easily have suffered from the well-meaning, sincere condescension that has made Elvis's effort something of an embarrassment, but Strummer avoids the pitfalls and instead the song--a forthright wail over inner-city poverty--becomes a powerful anthem that has respect for its subjects. "The Call Up" is another example of pure Clash bliss, a vaguely funky number with very direct lyrics that someone with less formidable vocal skills than Joe Strummer would have botched badly (just imagine what Bono would do with a song about young boys going off to war!), but Strummer's lyrics key into the emotions of fathers and sons in a way that makes it resonant instead of preachy. There are plenty of other examples, but it's hard to see these songs as anything other than triumphs of the approach the Clash took to this album: the album thrives on spontaneous, found emotion, and packaging all that up in the London Calling fashion would have been counterproductive. Other highlights include: "Charlie Don't Surf", a surf-and-sitar tune that references Apocalypse Now and just proves how cool these guys were; "Police On My Back", which isn't an original Clash tune but it just rocks so hard; "Magnificent Seven", in which Strummer raps well before it's cool, and so many more.All in all, this is an album that even the most charitable assessment must admit has some flaws. But it has some moments that hit home harder than anything else The Clash ever did, and even with the filler it's never not a highly rewarding listen.

Ok then, i know its a bold statement to declare a record as being the greatest ever, but thats exactly what im going to do. First of all lets get one thing straight, just because im saying its the best album ever does not mean you will like it. The best album ever for you is the one that means the most. Personal preference is something that just cant be argued. However , i thought the best way to judge the best album ever is to put personal preference aside and simply examine the the entire albums contents as honestly as possible. I did this with a lot of records, im serious, it took me bloody ages. In the end the decision was easy, Sandinista by The Clash is the best album ever. I can hear you laughing at me now as you wonder how i came to this conclusion, well, here's how....First of all Sandinista breaks every rule there is to break when it comes to making an album. Its too long, the songs are in the wrong order, it remixes its own songs on the same album and The Clash liked one song so much they put it on there twice, only the second version is backwards. Its easy to see that the Clash were prepared to take risks and not bore us by repeating a musical formula that so many great bands seem to do a lot of. I can almost here Beatles fans now saying, what ? you think the beatles repeated themselves. Its ok Beatles fans, The White Album is second on my list of best albums ever. Well then , back to Sandinista. Its great to hear an album that hasn't spent to much time in the editing suite , producers tend to seek absolute perfection when it comes to mixdown and perhaps more often than not the magic was there right at the beginning. Sandinista was made in a very small space of time, just three weeks to record 36 songs and i can assure you when it comes to the way it sounds, it is magic. Ultimately its the songs that make a great album and whilst there is no big songs on this album ( what i mean by big is there are no songs that have become deeply entrenched into the human psych, like say All You Need Is Love is or Stand By Me, you get my jist) but the songs on Sandinista are delivered with such awe inspiring passion. The best way to describe Sandinista is that it is a record that starts out feeling like its to much, but after time, it seems like its never enough....... PS you should listen to this record on vinyl only as cd simply compresses out all of its richness.

One of the best albums from this seminal British Rick band.