It is often said of the Clash's fourth album, Sandinista! (1980), that it is four sides too long (the original vinyl was a triple album, priced, at the band's insistence, at the same level as a single album.) It weighs in at around 2½ hours, and, listened to in one mammoth session, would test the patience of a saint.
But, when all is said and done, it's 36 tracks for the price of 12, so what did you expect? Funny, isn't it, how nobody ever dares to suggest castrating the previous year's double album London Calling, because it is Officially A Revered Classic Album and therefore above such criticism, despite containing total dross like Jimmy Jazz and Lost In The Supermarket among otherwise indisputable moments of greatness.
That's not to say that Sandinista! isn't unashamedly self-indulgent. Recorded in just three weeks in London, Manchester, New York and Jamaica, Sandinista! is brimming with diverse musical styles and experiments, a daring avant-garde piece which invites comparison with The Beatles' White Album. If you don't like a track, don't worry: something completely different will be along within minutes.
The set kicks off with "The Magnificent Seven", the first track from a new, mature Clash which sees Strummer polemicising over - of all things - a funky white rap which grooves along nicely, thanks largely to Paul Simonon's superb bassline which pins the whole sound together, even if the scattershot lyrics are a little patchy. After five minutes, Joe Strummer proclaims 'fucking long, innit?' and the track starts to fade out, after which we are spirited into the Motown-styled "Hitsville UK", a paean to the DIY punk music ethic with an all-female vocal line. Your ears might be telling you that this sounds nothing like the Clash, but just take a look at the lyric sheet. There's no mistaking the real thing. Sandinista! is something of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The album can at times seem both disorientating and exhilarating with its musical changes of turn. Looking at Disc One alone, there's the delightful dub-flavoured "Junco Partner", a brass band-led "Something About England", the woozy, parping "Rebel Waltz" and even freeform jazz on Mose Allison's also-ran "Look Here". In fact, the casual listener won't hear anything that sounds remotely like classic Clash until the second half of Side Two, when "Somebody Got Murdered" rewards the listener's patience with a typically heroic anthem.
The first of the three discs ends with another flawed excursion into dub, "One More Time", which doesn't really go anywhere, is interminably long, and frankly, if you're not into reggae, you'll be delighted by the next track, which is... er, the same track all over again, remixed with a studio flange effect used with all the enthusiasm of a teenage guitarist trying out his first effects pedal. Perhaps not the most obvious note on which to end Disc One, but there are bigger and bolder surprises to come.
Disc Two starts reasonably enough with Joe Strummer's stuttering "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)", a funked-up ode to life in New York. "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" mines the classic Clash sound once more, but the album moves back into more eclectic territories with the calypso-flavoured "Let's Go Crazy", which all at once spirits up the sound and the atmosphere of a Notting Hill carnival. The third side even closes with a surreal gospel pastiche ("The Sound of the Sinners"). Another cover, Eddy Grant's "Police on My Back", opens Side Four, reinvented here as a pacey punk number, neatly subverting the album's trick of making punk sound like reggae.
But it is Disc Three that will trouble your record player the least. For starters, the opening track to Side Five, "Lose This Skin", isn't even the Clash at all, more a selection of Clash members backing Joe Strummer's old busking mate Tymon Dogg, who plays violin throughout. It's actually quite a catchy melody if you can stand Dogg's vocal - I still swear blind it's Toyah Willcox singing and, I kid you not, there's even bloody bagpipes at the end of the song.
If Sandinista! is the Clash's White Album, then its "Revolution 9" is surely the unlistenable sound collage "Mensforth Hill". There's even a "Good Night" moment just before the end in the form of a reworking of "Career Opportunities", reinvented here as a children's classroom singalong, just in case the point was a bit too subtle the first time round.
Sandinista! does, in fact, sound way ahead of its time, mixing genres as fluidly as any of Joe Strummer's solo work with the Mescaleroes. The band (with producer Mikey Dread) clearly had a glut of ideas and wanted to try something totally different. The results can sometimes sound a little disjointed, perhaps even chaotic at times, but hey, that's punk for you, and if you miss the point, then maybe you're not as punk as you thought you were. The album is certainly a less commercial effort than London Calling, and maybe that's why it palls on the ears of those with less sophisticated tastes, people who were expecting nosebleed White Riot-era punk or those who bought "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" on the back of that jeans advert.
Sandinista! takes the curveball of styles thrown by its predecessor and runs away with them, and as such it takes some patience to appreciate. If you get the joke, Sandinista! is a wonderful album indeed, but just like a good Stilton, you'll appreciate this rich musical offering at its best when it's broken up into smaller chunks.
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