HawgWyld's Full Review: Give 'Em Enough Rope [Remaster] by The Clash
If there's one word to describe the first five albums from the Clash, it's innovation. Well, that's almost correct. Give 'Em Enough Rope, which was released in 1978 and is the second release from the band, is different from the rest of the discs because it is similar in style to the band's self-titled debut. Look at it this way. The debut album is solid punk rock with some reggae roots. London Calling, the third disc from the band, is amazing in that it contains snatches of punk, reggae, rockabilly and all sorts of odd stuff. Sandanista! is just a bunch of oddness spread across three albums. Combat Rock flirts with pop, but retains a lot of punk trappings.
See? Give 'Em Enough Rope doesn't really represent a stylistic change from the first disc. This thing is just confrontation, bare-knuckles punk on which the band rants and raves against injustice and other things that it finds annoying. Is there a problem with that? Nope. There's no problem at all.
In a recording-quality sense, though, this is way ahead of the debut. Where many of the songs on the first disc have kind of a "tin can" quality to them, the material on Give 'Em Enough Rope is treated much better and the songs have more range and depth of sound. This is not a minor point -- a lot of punk rock, especially from the 1970's, sounds like it was recorded with a single microphone that was tossed in while the band was playing. While not perfect, the recording quality here is quite good when compared with a lot of other stuff from that genre (put on some Misfits tunes as an example of horrible production).
Some of the tunes here are absolute classics from the Clash. "Drug-Stabbing Time" is as furious and fast as anything the band recorded, while songs like "Tommy Gun" and "Julie's in the Drug Squad" are solid rockers that help hold the disc together. Joe Strummer provides the warbling growl for vocals for most of the disc, but Mick Jones (lead guitarist for the band) steps in with his high-pitched whine on "Stay Free." If there's any major flaw with this disc, it's that the 10 songs here only fill up about 39 minutes. That's too short, as far as I'm concerned.
While this isn't the best album from the band (that honor, arguably, goes to London Calling), it's still an essential disc from one of the bands that helped define punk rock. As for the music and lyrics here, this album better than the vast majority of stuff that was recorded by various punk bands in the past 25 years. This disc seems a bit overlooked by some Clash fans, and that's a shame.
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