The Clash , "Sandinista" (1980, CBS Epic)

Overindulgent? We don't think so!

London Calling is The Clash's universally acclaimed masterpiece. Music bible Rolling Stone famously branded it "Best album of the 80s", even though it was technically released in 1979. And yes, it's difficult to disagree. If anything, the common rhetoric is that the number one spot is a toss-up between their 1977's punk debut and London Calling.

Most music magazines, however, will go at lengths to talk you out of its follow-up, Sandinista, a triple-LP released in 1980 for the price of a single album. An "overlong dirge", "self-indulgent and overly-political", Sandinista brought the accusation to the fore that The Clash had moved too far from their punk roots.

Bollocks, that's what we say to that. The Clash were never about punk rock intended as a two-minute-long, three-chord, two-fingered creation (that'd be best left to Elastica and the likes).

Now, if there's such a thing as a "punk spirit", Sandinista is the embodiment of it. The Clash were about constantly redrawing canons and leaving behind 'Little Englander syndrome', the wool-on-eye disease that tags any experimentation with the epithet 'pretentious' (an expression the UK's music press tend to use in industrial quantities).

Sandinista introduced a whole generation of white kids to reggae and made punk accessible to non-whites. It added touches of hip hop, dub, gospel, Cajun and rockabilly to a band that swapped punk's no-future slogan for a never-look-back ethos. And as to the philosophy of it, who can think of another band who'd tell their label to shove their royalties up their bum in order to put out a triple album for the price of a single one?

Sandinista may not be all catchy-tunes and chart-toppers but if you're reading this, I suppose you already know that's not what The Clash stood for. However, it includes real classics with some of the most mature and inspired lyrics Joe Strummer ever wrote.

The opener, rap crossover The Magnificent Seven, remains one of the all-time top-Clash tracks. A peerless portrayal of 9 til 5 work alienation ("Clocks go slow in a place of work/ Minutes drag and the hours jerk"), arse-licking ("you can be true, you can be false, you'll be given the same reward"), capitalist exploitation ("You lot! What? Don't stop! Give it all you got!"), it manages to condense incredibly sophisticated concepts in a handful of couplets:

"So get back to work an' sweat some more
The sun will sink an' we'll get out the door
It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages"

Bono once said that Sandinista is like an atlas. Clash fans would simply listen to it and learn about what was going on in all corners of the planet. In fact, the title itself is about the late 70s and early 80s' Nicaraguan left-wing guerrilla that famously fought the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. Unafraid of press criticism, The Clash declared their heartfelt support and took to wearing the Sandinistas' colours on stage.

Washington Bullets, with Mick Jones on lead vocals, is about America's support for right-wing paramilitary death squads across the planets. Quite a poignant theme in the wake of George W Bush's lopsided support for world democracy. Broadway is a dysfunctional and heartbreaking tale of homelessness and rich/poor divide, while Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is a snapshot of coldwar paranoia.

Something About England is a reminder that Olde England wasn't all flowers, chocolate and gentlemen in caps:

"There was masters an' servants an' servants an' dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace
England never closed this gap"

A few years before his premature death, Strummer said of Sandinista, "I wouldn’t change it even if I could". To us, that counts more than a hundred lazy reviews.