Avoiding the Clash's three-chord monte, Strummer shifts evocatively from the Afropop spice of "Sandpaper Blues" to the dub-wise electronica and Middle...

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Avoiding the Clash's three-chord monte, Strummer shifts evocatively from the Afropop spice of "Sandpaper Blues" to the dub-wise electronica and Middle Eastern rallying-cry chorus of "Yalla Yalla." Songs like "Forbidden City" - an anti-Chinese-government meditation built on the radical legacy of Clash classics like "Straight to Hell" - find Strummer's old fury aging gracefully into impressionistic indignation and Dylan-esque significance. Ironically, the most Clash-like song on Rock Art is the chiming stop-start anthem "Diggin' the New," a hearty embrace of the future. "I got no time for Luddites," Strummer sneers ecstatically on "Diggin'" - and we're all the better for it.

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There's a certain symmetry in Rancid's label signing Joe Strummer: He is, after all, one of their musical heroes. But if you're expecting a Clash redux...

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There's a certain symmetry in Rancid's label signing Joe Strummer: He is, after all, one of their musical heroes. But if you're expecting a Clash redux from the man, it's time to think again. While it's impossible for him to completely escape his past, he's kept his ears open for the last 15 years (10 since his last solo album), embracing techno, world music and even taking strides into ballads. Like his old band, Strummer doesn't live within limits, and so you can have the ambivalent ode to suburbia, "Willesden To Cricklewood," nestled next to the loops and beats of "Yalla Yalla," and its Middle Eastern influences. Inevitably there's a touch of raggae, as well as the things Latin that have long seemed to fascinate Strummer, and surface in the percussion of "X-Ray Style." His anger remains intact, if a little more in check, and his appreciation of the roots of his music has deepened. It's easy to forget how acute a lyricist he's always been, and if anything his powers there have developed. The sheer unsentimentality of the words to the love song (yes, Strummer has written a love song) "Nitcomb" gives it its power. Artists have seen entire careers begin and end in the time Strummer has been inactive. But from this it's obvious that he not content to live in the past.

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