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<\/p>\nObserver\u00a0Music
\nBy Tim Sommer
\n13th Oct, 2016<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Deep in the heart of every rock musician, from the most credible to the most commercial, there lies someone whining, \u201cJe suis un artiste! If only the world knew what a deep, tortured soul I am, and how complicated my record collection is!\u201d<\/p>\n
The more practical of these musicians merely peppers their catalog with maudlin and heartfelt ballads. Let\u2019s call this the Bon Jovi method: \u201cPerhaps you will forgive that Slippery When Wet stuff if I sing another song that is the musical equivalent of the page in the yearbook dedicated to that 11th grader who died.\u201d Other artists make severe left or right turns, and produce albums dripping with uncharacteristic drama and musical complication; here I direct you to Music From \u2018The Elder\u2019 by Kiss, a histrionic, incomprehensible, and orchestra-laden concept album from 1981 that very nearly ended Kiss\u2019 career (it\u2019s actually a pretty good record, by the way, and features two songs co-written by Gene Simmons and Lou Reed).<\/p>\n
Pop\/rock history is absolutely strewn with such artifacts, from Pet Sounds to Bad Religion\u2019s Into the Unknown (a fascinating pop\/prog exercise from 1983 that was so offensive to the group\u2019s fans that the band excised it from their catalog). In between these extremes, there\u2019s Springsteen\u2019s bold and courageous Nebraska, McCartney\u2019s remarkable Firemen albums, Neil Young\u2019s fascinating genre exercises (like Trans, Everybody\u2019s Rockin\u2019 and Arc), the Beastie Boys\u2019 game changing Paul\u2019s Boutique, and, of course, the great daddy of all of these sorts of records, Lou Reed\u2019s Metal Machine Music. There are also entire careers that are built on thwarting expectations, e.g. Scott Walker, Beck, Bowie and Prince.[i]<\/p>\n
In the autumn of 1979 Fleetwood Mac, a wildly popular and influential band at the peak of their visibility and commercial prowess, released a much-anticipated double album that was interpreted by fans and media as radical, even experimental. Almost exactly a year later the Clash, a wildly popular and influential band at the peak of their visibility and credibility, released a much-anticipated triple album that was interpreted by fans and media as radical, even experimental.<\/p>\n
Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Tusk is lean, effective and almost completely without waste or filler. It showcases a great band at their prime. Alternately precise and luxurious, Tusk is one of the most underrated albums of the era.<\/p>\n
It is the anti-Sandinista!.<\/p>\n
Sandinista! is a sprawling mess, resembling some kind of well-meaning dish that combines far too many under-cooked and over-thought ingredients (\u201cI\u2019m not sure yet if I\u2019m making a soup, a stew, or a salad, but maybe we should we throw some cardamom and fenugreek in there!\u201d). Sandinista! is like a perfect storm of mistakes, and it\u2019s one of the most confounding and overrated albums of all time.<\/p>\n
Respectfully, I \u201cget\u201d what the Clash were going for on Sandinista!\u2014they wanted to present a travelogue of the sound of the disenfranchised classes of Jamaica, London and New York City. But it appears that no one was running the show or making sure takes were satisfactory; seemingly, nobody cared if overdubs made any sense, or if the mixes were coherent; and it certainly sounds like no one was insisting that a song be fully composed before the tape was rolling.<\/p>\n
For 36 years, Sandinista! has been defined not by its content, but by the way it has been interpreted by an audience desperately eager to see genius where there was only confusion.<\/p>\n
Sandinista! is a prime\u2014perhaps the prime\u2014example of what happens when a well known artist does something so contrarian and obscure that it gets mistaken for greatness; let\u2019s call this \u201cThe Radiohead Effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is so effed up, it must be good!\u201d says the listener, who may also be the type of person who has spent far too much of his or her life listening to live recordings of \u201cDark Star\u201d, owns a copy of Elvis Costello\u2019s The Juliet Letters, and thinks liking Primus makes them really, really weird, maaan. Listen, pally, you want weird and good? Sit down with all four CDs of Tony Conrad\u2019s Early Minimalism Volume One, and then talk to me about your uncle who taught you all about Captain Beefheart and the Talking Heads.[ii]<\/p>\n
The standard line about Sandinista! is that there\u2019s an album worth of good stuff here. Well, that\u2019s not quite true. There may, indeed, be an album\u2019s worth of good material, but barely an EP\u2019s worth of good recordings.<\/p>\n
Only a year earlier, the Clash had released one of the greatest albums ever made. On London Calling, the Clash also deviated from expectations; they crafted a near-perfect double album that accessed influences from all over the world, from all over their heart, from all over the 20th century. London Calling is an album about the conflicting public and private faces of the West, referencing the music that had touched the Clash and made them the band they had become, from Woody Guthrie to Mott the Hoople to Jacob Miller to Lonnie Donnegan.<\/p>\n
The big difference, as far as I can tell, is that on London Calling, someone was in charge (specifically, producer Guy Stevens), and the Clash circa 1979 were a band who were seeking a form of perfection; but the band who made Sandinista! were, I believe, deliberately seeking a scattershot account of the 88 different types of music in their heads. However, I don\u2019t think they anticipated the desultory effect an undisciplined writing, recording and mixing process would have on the finished product.<\/p>\n
In order to underline my rather strong assessment of Sandinista!, I\u2019ll point out some specifics.<\/p>\n
In no particular order\u2026\u201cJunco Partner\u201d is one of the more coherent recordings on the collection, but why didn\u2019t someone ask violinist Tymon Dogg to tune up before recording? It\u2019s precisely this sort of problem\u2014stop the tape and tune the freaking violin\u2014that consistently plagues Sandinista!<\/p>\n
\u201cRebel Waltz\u201d is painfully close to being a great song, but it\u2019s about four mix passes away from a decent mix. Again, a track like this\u2014which, if it had been more thoughtfully arranged and mixed, would have fit in well on London Calling\u2014underlines why Sandinista! is such a troublesome album.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Sound of Sinners\u201d also could have been a helluva song, if it had been produced or mixed by someone who wasn\u2019t really, really high; and there\u2019s almost something to \u201cIvan Meets G.I. Joe\u201d, except, well, it\u2019s dumb, and they made the standard stoner mistake of not being able to distinguish between the sound effects and the music (the video game sounds are mixed as high as anything else in the track).<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s keep on going! \u201cLook Here\u201d, like many of the album\u2019s worst tracks, is an idea, not a song\u2014\u201cWe\u2019ll try to do a jazzy, swingy, kind of thing, um, I mean, let\u2019s not spend too much time on it, and, uh, I have one melody line I can repeat a lot, and if it doesn\u2019t sound quite right, we can just overdub some more stuff on it, and I think it will be, like, jazzy!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUp in Heaven\u201d is a very solid riff and a fairly decent verse and\u2026nothing else. Nada. No one bothered to write anything more. \u201cSomething About England\u201d is a goddamn good song, but it sounds like it was mixed by someone who just drank a lot of Benadryl and Baileys and chases shiny objects without any sense whatsoever of an \u201coverall\u201d coherent mix\u2014\u201cOh, that\u2019s a cool guitar part! Let\u2019s turn that up! Wow, I like the sound of that piano, let\u2019s put that fader up for a while!\u201d<\/p>\n
And on and on.<\/p>\n
Sandinista! is mortally faulty on every level, except for one: it\u2019s not pretentious, and its fascination with various urban music styles is sincere. In this sense\u2014the way in which it is genuine, and simultaneously under- and over-thought\u2014Sandinista! is reminiscent of Bob Dylan\u2019s Self Portrait. But Dylan did something pretty brilliant on Self Portrait: he kept things small, and the performances and arrangements are on the minimalist side, as opposed to Sandinista!\u2019s universal tendency to throw more and more crap into the gumbo.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s extract a pretty solid EP from the album\u2019s entire 144 (!) minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cMagnificent 7\u201d is a pioneering song with some style, effectively recorded. \u201cThe Call Up\u201d is dynamic and strange, with a compelling lyric. And \u201cHitsville UK\u201d, although drenched in the weed-friendly reverb haze that surrounds virtually all of Sandinista!\u2019s non-mixes, is a very solid song, even if it smells a bit like a second-rate Jam or Elvis Costello composition. Sandinista!\u2019s three unapologetically great tracks are \u201cSomebody Got Murdered\u201d, \u201cPolice on My Back\u201d and \u201cLose This Skin\u201d (though \u201cThe Call Up\u201d comes preciously close); but I suspect it is no accident that two of these three were not written by the Clash.[iii]<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more: The thing that makes Sandinista! not just a curious, well-meaning face-plant but also a true catastrophe are the dub tracks. The half-dozen-plus dub tracks on the album are pretty sorry and confused examples of the genre. Generally, dub is the act of taking away elements, and effecting those that remain, to create a psychotronic, mesmerizing, hypnowoofer effect; however, the dub tracks on Sandinista! have more to do with \u201cRevolution No. 9\u201d or a bad sophomore year music concrete project. Whereas I can concede that most of Sandinista! is well intended, the dub tracks are just a disaster, a sign of what a misdirected and ill-conceived mess this whole thing is.<\/p>\n
Now\u2026Tusk.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ll be honest, you can\u2019t even compare these two albums, these extraordinary adventures. From hushed, flickering ballads to constricted, tightly wound pop built out of the closely arranged Legos of genius, Tusk is a masterpiece, or very goddamn close to it. It has to be one of the best\u2014and most absolutely rewarding and consistent\u2014double studio albums ever made, and it has dated exceedingly well.<\/p>\n
To rediscover Tusk (or to investigate it for the first time!) is like stumbling upon a lost masterpiece by the Go Betweens, XTC, Nick Lowe, Kimberly Rew, the dBs, or any of the artists from the early 1980s who were trying to create a highly conceptualized yet non-indulgent uber-pop resonant with emotion and depth.<\/p>\n
On Tusk, Fleetwood Mac distill the very best of their past (the uncluttered intensity of the Peter Green era, the gorgeous, sad restraint of the Danny Kirwan years, and the harmony-laden FM glow of Rumours and Fleetwood Mac) into one package, and present it in a detailed, fastidious fashion; every sighing and soaring note and iridescent guitar is placed with nearly mathematical intent. What results is an album that easily equals the best credible pop of the era.<\/p>\n
Contrary to the hype that usually accompanies Tusk, this isn\u2019t just Lindsey Buckingham\u2019s album; in fact, if you remove his tracks, you\u2019re still left with a goddamn terrific record.<\/p>\n
Christine McVie\u2019s exquisite \u201cBrown Eyes\u201d is a cool, shimmering, dusk-purple spray of hooded-eyed sadness; the bass-chord-driven \u201cNever Make Me Cry\u201d is such a great example of late-night low-volume electric melancholy that it is reminiscent of Mazzy Star or Malcolm Burn-era Chris Whitley (and despite Buckingham\u2019s more deliberate efforts, it might be the most successfully arty track on the album).<\/p>\n
As for Buckingham\u2019s much noted achievements on Tusk, they are artful and meticulous, and like the work of Mitch Easter-era R.E.M., endlessly fascinating, with new production quirks and onion-skin-like overdubs revealing themselves on every new listen.<\/p>\n
When you combine Buckingham\u2019s precisely tweaked pop gifts with McVie and Nicks\u2019 luxurious, poignant sigh-pop, and then paint the whole megalith in the intimate tones that Tusk is bravely produced in, the result is rare magic. I think the album most comparable to Tusk is the Beach Boys\u2019 Smiley Smile, which also balanced Brunelleschi-like brilliance with Gropius-like simplicity, creating a pastoral yet ecstatic album.[iv]<\/p>\n
Listen, I can\u2019t say enough about Tusk, but it\u2019s really stunning how this emotional yet disciplined album, so richly composed and edited and mixed to masterpiece-like effect, is virtually the opposite of Sandinista!.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s put it this way: Sandinista! absolutely insists you call it brilliant, because if you refuse to, you\u2019ll see what a true piece of crap it is. At some point in high school, some friend of yours\u2014possibly someone you wanted to hook up with\u2014showed you one of their poems. It was pretentious nonsense full of typos, and combined the worst aspects of Kahlil Gibran, Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut. But you had invested so much in your friendship with this person that not only did you say you liked it, you actually convinced yourself that it was brilliant.<\/p>\n
Generationally, we had so much invested in believing the Clash were The Only Band That Matters (especially after the Everest-like triumph of London Calling) and so much invested in believing that they were our Beatles, our Stones, that we not only tolerated the babbling, incomplete and indecipherable nonsense that was Sandinista!, we actually convinced ourselves that it was as good as the band thought it was when they were really high and recording it.[v]<\/p>\n
I shall end this anecdotally.<\/p>\n
One day in 1981, in my role as teenage journalist and correspondent for the U.K. music weekly Sounds, I found myself talking to Christine McVie. I told her I had heard that the Clash wanted to make sure that their new triple album, Sandinista!, would sell in stores for a lower price than Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Tusk. McVie arched an eyebrow and said, \u201cAh\u2026the Clash\u2026I believe that\u2019s one of those bands Lindsey likes.\u201d<\/p>\n
One day in 1981, in my role as NYU student who lived in Weinstein Dormitory and made virtually daily pilgrimages to a record store on St. Marks Place called Sounds, I ran into Joe Strummer. He was walking on the north side of 8th Street between University and Broadway. He was holding a small brown paper bag full of cherries. Being a strident but generally amiable 18-year-old asshole, I felt compelled to tell him all the things I didn\u2019t like about his latest album, Sandinista! I also told him how very much I liked the just-released album from his pre-Clash band, the 101ers.<\/p>\n
Strummer listened politely, never losing eye contact. When he saw that I was done, he smiled and said, \u201cWant a cherry?\u201d<\/p>\n
[i] Into the Unknown is actually a pretty good record, and the two Firemen albums (Paul McCartney\u2019s collaboration with producer\/former Killing Joke bassist Youth) are probably McCartney\u2019s most interesting work of the last 25 years. Neil Young\u2019s Arc, like Metal Machine Music, is much better described than heard.<\/em><\/p>\n [ii] Seriously, though, listen to Early Minimalism Volume One; it is a deeply important and fascinating document, and a fundamental part of understanding the birth of the Velvet Underground, Krautrock and Sonic Youth.<\/em><\/p>\n [iii] \u201cPolice on My Back\u201d is a first-rate cover of an even better recording by the vastly underrated Equals, a terrific and pioneering mod\/blue beat band from the 1960s led by Eddy Grant; and \u201cLose This Skin\u201d is written and sung by violinist Tymon Dogg.<\/em><\/p>\n [iv] Two architects mentioned in one sentence! I knew those NYU classes in urban design would pay off!<\/em><\/p>\n [v] Regardless, I\u2019ll still take Sandinista! over the worst multi-LP album ever made, ELP\u2019s triple-disc Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends. If I ever get Doctor Who-like powers to travel through space and time, the very first thing I will do is destroy the master tapes to this unforgivable atrocity; only then will I consider preventing Hitler\u2019s birth or telling a young Robert De Niro that he should never, under any circumstances, make any movies with Ben Stiller.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Observer\u00a0Music By Tim Sommer 13th Oct, 2016 Deep in the heart of every rock musician, from the most credible to the most commercial, there lies someone whining, \u201cJe suis un artiste! If only the world knew what a deep, tortured soul I am, and how complicated my record collection is!\u201d The more practical of these … Continue reading Indulgent Showdown: Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u2018Tusk\u2019 vs. The Clash\u2019s \u2018Sandinista!\u2019 | The Observer<\/span>