The Boston Globe October 17, 2003

Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
Streetcore Hellcat Records

The rock world lost an unforgettable renegade when former Clash singer Joe Strummer died unexpectedly last Dec. 22. This posthumous new CD suggests that Strummer still had some vital music to share. There are so many ear-grabbing songs that you can expect the album to land on many year-end Top Ten lists. Strummer's belief in the power of rock is best heard in "Arms Aloft," a recollection of a show in which "we were arms aloft in Aberdeen/The spirit is our gasoline." He summons the Clash's pioneering rock-reggae fusion in "Get Down Moses" (which could fit snugly onto the Clash's "Sandinista!" album) and smartly fuses retro garage-rock and reggae on "Coma Girl," a wry, Telecaster-guitar-driven tune about a woman who is "the Mona Lisa on a motorcycle gang." Strummer's writing became vividly offbeat in this later years--and there's plenty to love in that regard on "Midnight Jam" ("You name every jail in Germany, I've been there," he sings) and the alluringly percussive "Ramshackle Day Parade," about how the new century came and "we're pushin' though it." Strummer is no longer pushing, but he left a gem of an album here. Another highlight is the folk-flavored "Long Shadow," about grappling with personal demons and how one has to "wrestle 'em to the ground." The song features guitarist Smokey Horvel (who played with Johnny Cash) and has the climactic line, "Somewhere in my soul there's always rock n' roll." And for Strummer, there was always politics as well, evidenced by a shimmering cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." This CD is a fitting exclamation point to the Strummer legacy.

by reviewer Steve Morse