Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros - Streetcore

rocky says: This album was an utterly unexpected surprise and sorely needed sweet spot back in 2003. I was still mourning Strummer's unexpected passing of December 24 2002 when this record hit the college airwaves. Mourn not, he said to me. And get thee fucking rocking whilst thee still canst, thou lazy fock! His Marley remake is superb. "Get Down Moses" is simply all-round breathtakingly ("gotta cough to get off") perfect, and "Arms Aloft" is the best song about that-special-feeling-of-being-at-an-incredible-concert ever. No. I take that back. It's actually about how critical it is to keep the feeling of that music alive as you descend back into the drudgery of the workaday world. To quote the fine refrain:

May I remind you of that scene

The spirit is our gasoline

May I remind you of that scene

We were arms aloft in Aberdeen

May I remind you of that scene

Let a million mirror balls beam

May I remind you of that scene

Fuuuuuck! This is Pure Potent Distilled Moonshine Stuff. Not for the Weak of Heart.

allmusic says: Like Muddy Waters, whose final albums were among the best in his catalog, Streetcore by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros sends Strummer into rock & roll heaven a roaring, laughing, snarling lion.

Streetcore anchors itself in rock & roll and deadly heavy reggae (and for anyone who needs a reminder, Strummer's former band, the Clash, played reggae in the late '70s and early '80s better than a lot of that genre's artists).

From "Coma Girl," the album's opening track, there is no doubt that Strummer hits bedrock with this fusion of garage band wail and dread beat. "Coma Girl" uses lean and mean guitars and Phil Spector's 1960s girl groups, then crosses them rhythmically with rocksteady basslines and enormous backbeats. Yes, it does sound like a lost cut from London Calling. A love song for a wasted mascot who flirts and inspires the various metaphorical socio-politcal gangs that are trying to rule the dawn of the end of the world, Strummer and band — the Mescaleros, with their killer rhythms and over-the-red-line guitar and keyboard lines are as tight and tough as anybody out there — truly find the flowers borne by suicide divas in the dustbin of the apocalypse.

Writing like Bob Dylan at his most expressionistic, Strummer's protagonist is living on the nether edge of reality, where the worst has already happened, he can only celebrate what's left in the ashes of civilization.

Listening to the crunchy rocksteady thunder in "Go Down Moses," with its monstrous dubbed-out bass and lyrics about the wholesale sellout of the world, listeners can hear Strummer laughing in the face of all the darkness that multinationalism can muster.

"Long Shadow," with its minor-key architecture and acoustic guitars played in pure Americana rambling style, was written for Johnny Cash but never recorded. Its protagonist crosses deserts and rivers; he haunts the places of desolation in order to speak with the voice of the Storyteller.

The burning revolution drama of "Arms Aloft" has a refrain that is among the most anthemic and raucous Strummer ever wrote. With wah-wah guitars, distorted bass, bombastic drums and cymbals, it is the hardest rocking track on the set.

A deeply moving reading of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" is played acoustically by Strummer, Smokey Hormel, and Benmont Tench, and produced by Rick Rubin. This is the only cut that the Mescaleros don't appear on; it wasn't recorded for this set but is included by Luce (Strummer's widow) and the band as a hinge piece for the front and back of the album to hang on, and it works gloriously. The closer, a cover of the Bobby Charles' classic "Before I Grow Too Old," is retitled here as "Silver and Gold." It's a barroom song played in elegiac, Anglo country style — think of the Mekons on Fear and Whiskey.

Strummer's last line in the song is, "I've got to hurry up before I grow too old," before he speaks to us in his grainy Cockney voice, "OK, that's a take." It's almost as unbearable as it is unforgettable. Streetcore is the sound of Joe Strummer hitting his stride with his own band on his terms both lyrically and musically. The fact that this is a final album for Strummer is beside the point; this is one of the best rock & roll albums of 2003, and truly the finest, most cohesive work he did after London Calling.

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