Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

In pop culture, timing is everything; any CD with a late September release date faced possible burial beneath the psychic rubble of 9/11. Post-punk survivor Joe Strummer deserves better, perhaps much better. While the Clash let urgency transcend its devotion to Right Notes and Proper Chords, Joe’s a little wiser: the old whispers of world music are louder now, and his Mescaleros are deftly capable of Celtic, electronica, grunge or metal. Gone are the anthems; the exact meanings of his politics aren’t articulated as much as insinuated by Strummer’s voice, where the whiskey’d rasp of middle age meets the knowing snarl of the smartest underachiever in your sophomore class (high school, not college). God (or somebody) bless ’im; he’s still performing at the level of intensity, guttural and true, where the Clash was most essential. Let this be one more office dweller who made it out onto the street before the building fell.