Review Summary: “North and South” is a brilliant song and you should listen to it. Anyways, I wanted to put that right there because “Cut the Crap” is otherwise bewildering, odd, and quite a disappointment.
Alright, I'm going to be fair here -
Cut the Crap isn't the worst thing ever recorded, yet it lands far below
London Calling (well, obviously, that's probably one of the greatest albums I've heard). There's some incredibly inane tracks ("Fingerpoppin'" is perhaps the Clash's worst song in general), there's songs where you have no idea what’s going on ("Dictator" and "Life is Wild" are my two picks for this category, because the awful production through this entire album I feel is the strongest on these and it definitely bewilders me), although there's some actually really strong moments on here.
I'll just say that I don't think "This is England" is the forgotten gem that many claim it to be, but it's still a reliable, yet somewhat boring song to my ears. "North and South", however, is truly beautiful and one of the most overlooked songs in the Clash's discography. It’s the one song from here that people really should check out, the only one where the 80s production actually works in its favor. "Three Card Trick" sounds like a B-side to something they could've made in the late 70s, while "Dirty Punk" and "We Are The Clash" are just reliable punk songs that could've worked better if they weren’t hurt by some awful production choices.
And that’s where this album really starts to fail for me - listening to
Cut the Crap feels like listening to an early stereo Beatles album, back in the day when stereo was seen as a gimmick and presenting stereo sound meant hard panning vocals or instruments to the left or right. That’s actually what this album does, and it makes it really hard to listen to if you’re wearing headphones. It’d be one thing, though, if
Cut the Crap actually sounded good, but it just doesn’t. There’s barely any bass, and it really comes off as a complete mess of horns and sterile 80s production. Which is a shame, because there’s some great
songs here that are ruined by the production - “Cool Under Heat” being the prime example of this for me.
It’s not really terrible, but I wouldn’t say it’s that good either. I'd recommend this just for "North and South" and "This is England", although if you can deal with the production, "Dirty Punk", "We Are the Clash" and "Cool Under Heat" are pretty decent as well.
