release date: May 14, 1982
format: vinyl (CBS 85570) / cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [4,12]
producer: Glyn Johns, The Clash
label CBS Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 4. "Know Your Rights" - 2. "Car Jamming" (4 / 5) - 3. "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (4 / 5) - 4. "Rock the Casbah" (4,5 / 5) - 5. "Red Angel Dragnet" - 6. "Straight to Hell" (4,5 / 5) - 8. "Atom Tan" - 9. "Sean Flynn" - 10. "Ghetto Defendant" (feat. Allen Ginsberg) - 11. "Inoculated City" (4 / 5)
5th and final 'real' The Clash studio album, as two of the original members left the band after this. This was the first of their albums that I bought immediately upon its release. I found it good but not great. In hindsight, I believe it's better than then, but at the time everyone just wanted something like London Calling again, and not all that reggae or rock & roll inspired stuff that they had been engaged with. Yes, punk rock had been declared dead shortly after I came to know of its existence, which was around 1980. I loved the catchy and energetic punk and garage rock of the late 1970s and at the same time found that the funky synth rock of "Rock the Casbah" was the best song, although it's far from what you'd normally associate with The Clash. The song became the band's biggest commercial success. Today, I still think it's a great song but frankly, find that "Straight to Hell" is the best song of the album. The album has a strong rebellious attitude and many of the lyrics underline the band's unique status with something meaningful on their mind, like self-appointed spokesmen of the poor, the homeless, and everyone else who'd be struggling to get by in a world occupied by the capitalist plague. It's also a band you'd always find 'politicising' almost everything, which in this case, I only mean in the most positive way. The album is not their strongest and neither their worst, but as is the case with The Clash: when they're bad, they're still better than most.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, Q Magazine 3 / 5, Rolling Stone, Blender 4 / 5 stars ]
