London Calling

This is one of the few rock albums ever released that is almost impossible to over praise. One can heap on the superlatives, pile on a few more, and still have room for even more laurels. It is probably by any standard one of the five greatest albums released in the rock era, unquestionably the greatest album released by a band with its roots in punk, the greatest explicitly political album ever released by someone who was not Bob Dylan, and one of those rare albums that doesn't seem to age at all. There isn't a weak cut on the album. In fact, the songs are not merely good but great. Although The Clash started off as a punk band, they were never adequately defined by that phenomenon. Although rooted in the attitudes and political sympathies of the punk movement (and above all else, English Punk, as opposed to the earlier American Punk, was highly political; originator Malcolm McLaren was deeply influenced by Guy Debord and the Situationist International, and included many political ideas in promoting the Sex Pistols and his punk fashions), The Clash quickly outgrew the punk aesthetic. While most of the original punks were merely two-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust bands, the Clash almost immediately began effortlessly and seamlessly assimilating a host of musical influenced. They were the first rock band, for instance, to use reggae rhythms and not make them sound like a gimmick (compare The Clash's extraordinary "The Guns of Brixton" with Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Maker," which while good sounds a bit like a novelty song, while The Clash sound like they ripped the song off some Jamaicans). The songs are remarkably sophisticated and polished, even when they sound casually. For instance, check out the almost haphazard way "Jimmy Jazz" starts, as if the band can't decide whether to allow the opening riff develop into a full fledged song. Even when it gets fully underway, there is an effortless looseness to the song that persists throughout the impeccably orchestrated song. It is a masterpiece of nonchalant virtuosity. Most of the songs are so brilliantly original to seem almost impossible. It isn't just that the songs are original; nothing else even remotely like many of them had ever been done before. Where is the predecessor of "Hateful"? Who cooked up "Lost in the Supermarket," with its amazing conglomeration of political and social ideas? Before hearing "The Right Profile," could anyone have imagined it possible to write a classic about Montgomery Cliff's car wreck? Even songs that remind one vaguely of previous songs manage to sound underivative. For instance, there is more than a little Phil Spector's wall of sound in "The Card Cheat," but where do those horns come from? A mark of the genius of this album can be seen in the fact that although it is one of the great leftist albums of all time, the most reactionary rock fan could still love every song. It is unquestionably great political rock, but more than that it is just flat out awesome rock. It is almost as if The Clash recreated on this album all the rebelliousness contained in the first rockers of the 1950s. These days, when every other album seems to be getting special expanded versions, this one truly could benefit from such treatment. The liner notes on the current U.S. edition are nonexistent. Hopefully this will be corrected at some point in the relatively near future.