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The Clash: Sandinista!

Roy Trakin, Musician, April 1981

The slapstick guerilla politics have never sounded more outlandishly unfashionable. Gone are the triple-front-line punk harmonics & amphetamine raw power. Ditto for the crunching metallic guitars. And, to top it all off, this three-record l-o-n-g player is fully one third filler. But, despite enough foolhardy flaws to sink any ordinary diamond, Sandinista! offers more than a few gems-in-the-rough to reward the diligent prospector. The Clash may be victims of their own overweaning ambitions, but the music's daring fusion of multinational pop idioms is a stirring declaration of belief in the global community. Clashpolitics are only orthodoxly-leftwing on the surface — at their root are Joe Strummer's heady humanism, Mick Jones' sentimental heart and Paul Simenon's terra firma muscularity.

Total word count of piece: 493

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