Decades on and it’s still hard to think The Clash came to an end with this as their last album. Cut the Crap is a shock to the system, though it shouldn’t be. Few bands have survived such massive personnel changes while also navigating through a genre which was starting to feel a little underwhelming. Cut the Crap is not this nasty horror show, just misunderstood Compared to preceding album Combat Rock and the ambitious Sandinista!, it received a scathing reception. Much of that appears to be built into how underwhelming it is to hear a band whose work had been so progressive and reliant on figuring out a route through new genres. Their punk roots to new wave transition are a fantastic listen, but the wheels come off as band members come and go between Combat Rock and Cut the Crap. It hasn’t really affected The Clash’s legacy, though it’s a sour note to end on considering just how strong an album Combat Rock remains.
Cut the Crap is a mess. There’s no way of getting around that fact. But there are moments on it which are, at the very least, interesting. Joe Strummer is lost in the mix of pop-adjacent noise but that feels like an inevitability. They’re trying to catch the thematics of Sandinista!, which had the occasional radio transition track or spoken word piece, but aren’t as patient with the delivery. It means the radio chatter which defined some of the band’s most interesting moments on previous releases is thrown into a song where the lyrics are not strong enough to stand out and the vocal performance isn’t mixed loud enough to hear. A crash of noise and car horn-like honks from The Clash uncovering a new collection of instruments. Dictator is as bad as it sounds but we can give the band credit for trying to capture the confusion and noise which comes out of dictatorships. It’s not the intent, but a nice defence to have when trying to gaslight yourself into listening to Cut the Crap.
All that just to say Dirty Punk is about as close as the group gets to the sound they wanted for Cut the Crap. They’re being punk by rejecting punk, especially because of what it represented by 1985. We Are The Clash undoes that goodwill, though, because they fall back onto the tropes of the genre. They’re both denouncing the state of modern punk yet relying on the biggest instrumental draws of the period. It’s a ridiculously poor experience from the band, though after the collapse between Combat Rock and Cut the Crap, this sort of drop-off should not be a surprise. The lead issue for Cut the Crap is how it sounds, and that’s a result of the attitude The Clash had for this project. No way around it, it’s an indifference from the band.
You can hear it on Movers and Shakers, a conniving piece of work which lashes out at those who were offering a hand to the group. Where were they meant to go from Combat Rock? Higher up the pyramid was hardly right as it removed them from their roots. But the cold concrete mentioned by The Clash on Cut the Crap never felt more brutal to fall on than now. This is England could have been a phenomenal anthem, had the band not already perfected this same sentiment with Something About England. What follows This is England is drum machine reliant slop. A real let down, but for those who made it this far, there is at least a couple moments of interest in the latter stages. The Clash burnt themselves out with a double album, triple album, and commercial powerhouse in record time. But Cut the Crap stands as a lesson all artists must learn. Call time on the creative pursuit before you become a pastiche of your best work.
