812 The Clash - Sandinista! (1980)

 812 The Clash - Sandinista! (1980)

Studio Album - Mostly Reggae and Dub



About the Act:

The Clash were formed as a punk band in 1976, in London, and morphed into a new wave band, and then into a band that embraced Reggae, Dub, Ska, Funk, Rockabilly, Gospel, Jazz and many other things. After some fall-out of members they stopped being a band in 1986. In ten years they had established themselves as one of the most significant bands of the era, gathering critical and commercial success with six studio albums.

The Classic line-up was Joe Strummer on lead vocals and gitar, Mick Jones of lead guitar, Paul Simonon on bass and Topper Headon on drums.


About the Album:

This was the fourth studio album by the band. It is a triple album. Lots of people loved it.


My History with this Album:

None


Review:

This was so not what I expected. First of all... The Clash. They were a punk band, right? Wrong. They had been, but this is not a punk album. Oh no. It is mostly dub and reggae with a few other things thrown in like Jazz and Gospel (well, mock-gospel). If you know "Ghost Town" by the Specials, that will give you a starting hook, but some of it is really quite what I would think of as "hardcore reggae", slow with mostly bass and drums. 

The second surprise was how long it is. If you have read everything above, you will know it is a triple album. I didn't. When I started to listen, I then started to wonder if I was listening to a "deluxe" version with extra tracks. Oh, no, I was less than halfway through.

This sounds, in some ways, more like a compilation album, and given a variety of singers taking part, possibly a compilation by different acts, but there is still a unifying feeling to it. The production at times is quite... well I hesitate to say "bad" but possibly "informal", as if it were thrown together. The band did the production and maybe it shows. It tends towards strong reverb and washyness, even sounding distant at time. There is quite a strong presence at times of quite strident electronic sounds and processing (echo for example) which mostly seems overdone, but that seems to be a reggae thing.

The songs, in my estimation, range from "OK" to "pretty good", there are highs and lows, and despite the length of the album there is a good variety. It's not as acerbic as I expected (again, I was thinking Punk), there is some political stuff and social commentary, and there's a reasonable amount of humour here too. I really like the song about careers advice, sung by children, for example. Quite a few tracks are dub versions of other tracks (generally meaning doctored with studio trickery, sometimes to the extent of being unrecognisable, and in one case backwards).

I quite enjoyed it. I might have liked it to be shorter, but is does sort of work as a triple. It's more a put on as background and forget album than a listen to really carefully album.


6.9/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2UxN3UKyS3Z5r0Sra8A5RF

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw8I74P--tlVmX53NXBA_YtzoovpSfdlU

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista!



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