Filled to surfeit with material served whole and in need of mastication, Sandinista! offers three albums’ worth of songs by a band whose self-confidence darkened their quality control. Sprawl is the intention and the result. That’s the least of Sandinista!‘s problems, though. The vaporous, echo-laden mix declaws even good to great songs like “Somebody Got Murdered” and “Up in Heaven.” Hooks they’ve got, committed performances by Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, and the impeccable rhythm section too; the songs don’t stick, alas. Committed to finalizing their infatuation with dub and reggae rhythms, The Clash produce the rock tunes as if they were dub and reggae. I wonder how Eddy Grant might’ve produced the excellent third side.
If Sandinista! has a principle, let’s call Monetism. Like the French Impressionist’s obsession with painting the same damn haystack as the light changes, The Clash re-record “Junco Partner,” “If Music Could Talk,” and others, dub-ifying them; they transform “Career Opportunities” into a terrifying playground chant sung by children, as if to stress how despair is universal. As statements these tracks “work” in the traditional sense — manifestos from a quartet audibly in love with playing together.
Meh
Hitsville UK
Look Here
The Crooked Beat
Living in Fame
Corner Soul
The Leader
Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
Mensforth Hill
The Street Parade
Kingston Advice
Silicone on Sapphire
Sound, Solid
The Sound of Sinners
If Music Could Talk
The Call Up
Let’s Go Crazy
Broadway
Version Pardner
Junco Partner
Something About England
Lightning Strikes (Not Once but Twice)
Shepherds Delight
Good to Great
The Magnificent Seven
One More Time
Police on My Back
Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)
Washington Bullets
Charlie Don’t Surf
Career Opportunities
Somebody Got Murdered
Humanizing The Vacuum 
It’s funny. They’d changed the military snare with dub and echo-laden sound. It came from the reggae catacombs. Ages I haven’t heard this. I remember “Police on My Back” mainly because it’s the closer I found’ em being the band I’ve known for three albums. Certainly it’s the most propulsive number. Anyway, they were willing to experiment and good for that. “Somebody Got Murdered” it’s the good song I believe suffers most from this treatment. It begs for the military snare. Ambient punk? I know Lydon was doing that echo-chamber thing before them, but I would classified PIL as post-punk.
If “Sandinista!” were mono, it could have passed for a Spector extravaganza.
Well, at that point I considered them more an R&B number than punk. Alenating purists but creating countless of hip.hop acts who would later pillage them. Strummer/Jones had a black heart just as the Ramones had the BBoys and the Ronettes (and a soft and tender heart) in them. So much for “punk”.
I’m still not quite sure why critics get themselves all up in a lather over “The Magnificent Seven.” I have a hard enough time with the actual good rap from the 80s, the last thing I went to hear is a bunch of Brits trying it on for shits and giggles.
Taking the piss? It doesn’t sound like it to me.
I don’t understand why corner soul is so under appreciated by clash fans. The vocal is haunting and the lyric ‘is the music calling for a river of blood’?’ just floors me.
Sandinista! was the first clash album I got to know and love. I’m glad I had this album as my introduction. No weight of expectation, no tracks already overfamiliar through cultural osmosis. This record feels like a aural reference list you could spend a year following up and feel a whole lot richer for it. And you can play the game of deciding what tracks would make the cut for the two sided it arguably should have been. But then you’d miss so much of the messing about, exploration and homage that just made me fall in live with this band.
Excellent. Thanks.