The Clash's fourth studio album Sandinista! was released in 1980. A triple album, it was the band's most ambitious musical project to date because of its incredible length and because it experimented with several genres including funk, dub, and rap that were completely out of the band's musical vocabulary beforehand. Partially because bassist Paul Simonon was preoccupied acting in a film during its recording, the album features extensive contributions from musicians outside of the band, which further changed the band's sound. Major contributors to the album include bassist Norman Watt-Roy and keyboardist Mikey Gallagher of the Blockheads, Jamaican reggae singer Mikey Dread, and Tymon Dogg, who performs violin on several tracks and one lead vocal. It was sold fairly well and was a critical success at the time of its release. Although reviews have been generally positive since, critics are often split about the album's length.
London Calling saw the Clash succeeding so spectacularly, it was easy to assume they could pull off anything and it seems the band came to that conclusion as well. Nevertheless, that presumption does not come from a place of ego; rather, the band uses their past success as leverage against the record company for greater recording freedom, which allows them to release an album with seven sides worth of music and to appease their boyish enthusiasm for experimentation and their growing eclectic pallet. With one or two listens of this monstrous album--which is already a lot to ask--it's easy to write off re-recordings of old Clash songs with children's choirs as needless filler but with a few more listens, Sandinista! reveals itself to be a complete project as immersive as The Beatles' White Album (I know that's not particularly original comparison but it's incredibly effective in this case). It's too long for an uninterrupted listen--you already knew that--but nearly all of the thirty-six songs are essential to this album's whimsical vision. In fact, the only knock I have against the album is the upper echelon of quality. Rarely does Sandinista! include cuts that peak above the average song on their magnificent third album--of course, how far could any album get trying to meet that expectation?--but there are a handful of superlative Clash classics including "If Music Could Talk," "Police on My Back," "Charlie Don't Surf," and one of Strummer's most directed political lyrics "Washington Bullets." If people do the work to love the Clash prior to picking up this album and, perhaps, have particularly long shifts delivering pizzas that provide ample listening breaks, I don't see how they couldn't also fall for even this album's most tedious moments. A-
