The only thing more potentially demonizing for a music critic to cover than charity records are posthumous albums from once legendary musicians. Most of the time these records either pale in comparison to the quality of the artists' earlier work, or prove to be incredibly sentimental mortality-pondering affairs. Furthermore, given that the artist is dead, picking out the weaknesses of their final contributions to the music listening public at large seems rather heartless, and more to the point, unnecessary. The job of the music critic is already unfairly viewed as a predatory position; no reviewer in his right mind would want to be accused of picking on the dead.
The way most critics seem to go about reconciling this rather unfortunate occupational hazard is by dishing out undeserved laudatory acclaim for these predominantly lackluster releases, which allows a perfect in for critics to eulogize about the great contributions that so-and-so musician once doled out to the world. Most importantly, though, this critical approach unfairly presents a very illusory and all-too tidy closure to creative lives that rarely seem to get wrapped up in such convenient Hollywood endings.
It's in this mired context that Joe Strummer's fourth and regrettably final solo release (excluding the Walker soundtrack), Streetcore, presents itself as somewhat of a posthumous album oddity. Given that Strummer's death last December from a heart attack came entirely unexpected, Streetcore brims with previously untraveled aesthetic directions, bittersweetly forward-gazing lyrics, and most of all, the overwhelmingly celebratory insurgence of rock 'n' roll-- decidedly not the trappings of pondering mortality. Ironically, it's a record that refuses to acknowledge endings; the album's aesthetics are an inconsistent but moving string of conflated genres, including rocksteady, dub, blues and folk, that thankfully avoid the hokey world-music-influenced pitfalls of Strummer's previous solo outings. So, while the record fails at living up to the hyperbolic critical proclamations of London Calling's second coming, it does make for a pretty decent, if somewhat unexpected, sweat-soaked finale for The Clash's legendary golden boy.
The record opens with its greatest moment; "Coma Girl" is a wildly exuberant blast of telecaster majesty whose seething, stripped-down production (courtesy of Mescaleros Martin Slattery and Scott Shield) provides a vital injection of youthful crunch. Though a fairly standard 4/4 rocker in spirit, it manages to equally evoke Allen Ginsberg, Jimmy Cliff, and the Rolling Stones. The nostalgic romp "Arms Aloft" offers a possible explanation for Strummer's brazen return to his rock 'n' roll roots: Over a din of sneering guitar licks and rollicking percussion, he finds solace in his glory days with a fist-raising chorus whose mantra goes, "Just when you were thinkin' of slinkin' down, I'm gonna pull you up, I'm gonna pull you down/ May I remind you of that scene, we were arms aloft in Aberdeen!"
One of the most surprising aspects of Streetcore is that whenever Strummer indulges these Jamaican influences, the results are less than noteworthy-- which is saying something for a man who historically helped merge the worlds of reggae and punk rock. For instance, the unabashedly rocksteady backdrop of the anti-capitalist plea "Get Down Moses" comes off more like No Doubt than Rockers, even while Strummer drops some well-intended lyrical musings. The instrumental "Midnight Jam" reaches for the echoing, hallucinatory highs of dub, but instead presents a laconic guitar vamp, startlingly bereft of any murky reverberated beauty. And then there's the worst offender: Strummer's cover of the Bob Marley classic "Redemption Song". It pains me to say that this track-- the only one not drawn from the original album sessions, and included by Strummer's widow Luce for what are most likely sentimental reasons-- verges on comedy. The song may have been recorded with the best of intentions as an ideal showcase for Strummer's love of reggae and folk, but Rick Rubin's spare production only leaves room for Strummer to make a fool of himself affecting a thick Marley patois for lines like, "Oh, pirates, yes they rob I."
If Streetcore fails to serve as the groundbreaking solo manifesto that critics had hoped for, it's of no consequence. The real marvel of the album is that it serves as an ideal document of one of rock's greatest, most diverse individuals. As Joe hauntingly sings on the record's sublime country-flavored closer, a cover of a Bobby Charles tune retitled "Silver and Gold": "I'm gonna go out dancing, I'm gonna see the city lights/ And do everything silver and gold, I got to hurry up before I get too old." Streetcore is proof that Strummer indeed lived it up "silver and gold" on record, and probably still is wherever he might be today.
