The Clash, London Calling

It's noteworthy to observe that for however many music acts don't know what they want to be at the beginning, a few of the greats do a style sprawl right in the middle. Yes, London Calling has all the punk attitude you expect from their third album, but also spreads on a healthy helping of soul, jazz, rockabilly and even a touch of ska and reggae (no doubt Guy Stevens' towering influence), and to my great surprise it all goes together brilliantly. You want a revolution? They'll play it. You want strutting and brass? They've got it. Social commentary? Silly jams? Name it. (Pete Townshend-esque guitar smashing? Sure!) The amazing part is how well it meshes; the undercurrent of attitude fuses it all well. In fact, there's so much great stuff here and the deft touch between edgy and entertaining is so adeptly handled that I can't think of a song I didn't like. But that's kind of its weakness, isn't it? It's 19 tracks of everything under the sun, and I do mean everything — like almost every double album ever made it goes on a bit too long even if the going's really good. The 25th anniversary version adds on a disc of premixes which have the same energy but not the same level of production, and except for the handful of unreleased tracks mixed in they're interesting exactly once. (Content: adult themes in "Lovers Rock," violent imagery in "Spanish Bombs," "Koka Kola" and "Guns of Brixton.")

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The Clash, Combat Rock

Their finest hour. The one where longtime fans accused them of selling out, and new, yet to be indocrinated fans, said, "who?" An unjustified assessment on both counts, because make no mistake: their bleeding hearts are just as proudly fixed on their torn T-shirts as ever in their long corpus of works (this is, after all, the band that brought you the questionably excessive Sandinista!), as evidenced by the unerring, unvarnished demands for social justice from the very first track ("Know Your Rights" even) and the sick, provocative confrontation of postmodern British and American racism in "Straight To Hell." ("Lemme tell ya 'bout your blood, bamboo kid," whitesplains a venomous Joe Strummer to his putative half-breed offspring. "It ain't Coca-Cola, it's rice.") No, you don't need to share in their brand of aggressive progressivism to enjoy classics like "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (though Spanish helps) and "Rock the Casbah," or for something a little less overplayed, the bleakly funky "Atom Tan." Every such A-side is a jam in this truly triumphant return to chaotic form. But even the minor moments shine, such as a musical example of Poe's law in the darkly satirical "Red Angel Dragnet," the rappin'-trappin's of beat icon Allen Ginsberg's monotone behind "Ghetto Defendant" and my personal favourite, the sparkling violent menace of "Death Is a Star," a critique of the public appetite mixing lounge lizard sensibilities with mass murder. Something for everyone. (Content: stylized violence, mature themes, some harsh epithets.)

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