Amazon.com essential recording
Bursting at the seams with creative energy, the Clash's stunning 1979 double album more than made up for the artistic and commercial disappointment of its predecessor, 1978's tried-too-hard
Give 'Em Enough Rope. With ex-Mott the Hoople producer Guy Stevens harnessing their sound as never before, the band yielded what proved to be the best work of their career. Bouncing from hard rock (the apocalyptic vision of the title track) to rockabilly ("Brand New Cadillac") to reggae ("Rudy Can't Fail") to pop (the Top 40 hit "Train in Vain"), the Clash knocked down all musical walls and, in the process, ended the argument over punk's viability in the U.S.
--Billy Altman
From Amazon.co.uk
Punk's death knell had already been called, but
London Calling found The Clash fighting a heroic rear guard battle. Having shelved the no-frills heads-down thunder of
The Clash and
Give 'Em Enough Rope,
London Calling was an extravagant benchmark. Ostensibly about the ideological and real struggles that rent British society asunder at the end of the 1970s,
London Calling was couched in the language of revolutionary desperadoes. Influenced by reggae and ska, and augmented by the Irish Horns, the result was one of the most heady, celebratory rock & roll records to have come out of the punk movement. For every traditional rabble-rouser like "Rudie Can't Fail" or "Revolution Rock", though, there was a starker truth to
London Calling found in "Guns Of Brixton", or a shred of poignancy in "Lost In The Supermarket" that confirmed The Clash's ideological importance to a generation. Seldom, if ever, had punk sounded so gloriously righteous, but so damn right. --
Louis Pattison
