Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin

A nuclear error but I have no fear

Cause London is drowning--and I live by the river

Strummer's voice through most of the song sounds like he's coughing up his innards, but towards the end he emits a chill screech that you can just imagine echoing predatorially across a deserted, icy moraine.

In contrast, the only warmth on London Calling comes from the Clash's idiosyncratic reggae tunes, songs of Kingston refracted by Brixton into an unruly, festive rainbow. They portray the down-and-out but proud, card cheats, gangsters and two-bit revolutionaries, using brass, piano, and organ to supplement the traditional guitar-bass-drums outfit.

London Calling radiates assurance--musical assurance that this so-called punk band can play any kind of music it chooses, and assurance of a larger sort, that the further the world sinks into confusion the closer it will come to revival. The very energy of most of the songs on the album belies the sense of entropy conveyed by a song like "London Calling." The Clash have taken popular music and used it to give frenzied life to Bakunin's maxim, "The lust to destroy is a creative lust." They have elevated their music to the point where such grand claims for it can't be dismissed out of hand--an achievement few musicians can boast of.