Paul Simonon is probably the coolest rock guy ever. He’s on the cover of London Calling- maybe the most iconic of record album covers. He was in the Clash. He wrote “Guns of Brixton”. He had the ultimate punk look.
Joining with Gary Myrick, he actually performs on one of my all time favorite records - Havana 3 AM- which was this mix of rockabilly and Tex-Mex- the kind of thing Joe Strummer always wanted to do- and it did it better than maybe even Joe did as a solo artist.
He played with one of the coolest 21st Century musos Damon Albarn in The Good, The Bad and The Queen, and even toured with Gorillaz. He has had a second career as an artist, spent time on Greenpeace vessels and even played on a Dylan record.
Simonon even had a cooler Covid lockdown than you. While the rest of us were wearing sweatpants, attending zoom meetings and binging on Tiger King, he used the time, writing music while living in a fishing village on the isle of Mallorca in the Mediterranean with singer Galen Ayers (coincidentally daughter of Soft Machine’s Kevin Ayers with a musical career of her own).
I have never been to Mallorca but “Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day” the pair’s 2023 album feels like it brings me there. Songs are sometimes sung in English and sometimes Spanish, while Strummer-style Spaghetti Western vibes and Sea shantys drift in their influence.
Perhaps the most obvious touchpoint is Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood and their albums. Pop from a distant time and place.
Albarn, Simon Tong (The Verve, Good Bad and the Queen) Dan Donovan (Big Audio Dynamite), and Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear, Sons of Kmet) support and Tony Visconti expertly produces.
This is a fun record that’s nuanced enough to appeal to Clash fans (at least fans of Strummer's globe-hopping solo career) and yet is probably the most opposite album you could find to the Clash’s debut record.
“I’ve never had a good time.. in Paris” is pure whimsy with the two exchanging lines. If this kind of light fare was all the album was, it would probably wear thin, but the album is a mixture of moods and styles- “ Lonely Town” treads similar trails to great effect, but “Room at the Top” takes it down a darker path. In any case, with the utmost respect for Paul who occasionally comes primarily to the fore as on "A Sea Shanty", the album is at its best when the two are both combine vocally.
This definitely is the kind of record that could be a cult album. It just odd enough that I suspect many will skip over it. But it surprisingly hangs together well enough that it rewards the listener who spends some time with it.
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