Jose" in sarcastic reference to the "Jose Unidos" production credit. Reflecting the critical consensus at the time, Mike Laye—a writer, photographer and Clash insider—said the band should "just drop the 'Cut' from the title, because to me this [is] crap." Robert Christgau, a longtime champion of the Clash in the US, offered only restrained praise in a Village Voice review that alluded to the negative word-of-mouth and summarised most of the album as "stubborn and jolly and elegiac and together". Music journalist Richard Cromelin found the album's uptempo songs less effective than those on earlier Clash records, but concluded that Strummer's singing is compelling and "This Is England" and "North and South" make the record "more than passable". The absence of Jones and Headon led many to regard it as a Joe Strummer solo album—an impression further solidified by Simonon's involvement being limited only to the pre-production stage. Its shortcomings were often attributed to Strummer's evident disillusionment with the group and the fact that he was grieving over the recent deaths of his parents. Joe Sasfy of The Washington Post wrote that the "revised version of the Clash sounds like a pale and ghostly facsimile of this once-great band"; he disliked the garbled choruses" and he found that "Strummer's attempt to enliven them with horn charts creates an ungainly mess of a sound." Similarly, Richard Defendorf of the Orlando Sentinel described the record as a "sometimes embarrassingly anachronistic... attempt to rekindle the Clash's punkish, militant energy." Music critic Liam Lacey was more favourable and concluded that, given the strength of "This Is England", "in its cheesily self-aggrandizing way, the new Clash may be on to something." Cut the Crap has been favourably reevaluated in some retrospective reviews, many praising Strummer's songwriting and vocal performance. The writer Jon Savage praised the album in his influential 1991 book on the history of punk, England's Dreaming, highlighting the "innovative use of rap rhythm and atmosphere". Yet its reputation as a failure, or at least as a lost opportunity, has endured. In 2002, Stephen Thomas Erlewine described "This Is England" as "surprisingly nervy" on a record that, in his view, is otherwise "formulaic, tired punk rock that doesn't have the aggression or purpose of early Clash records". Aftermath Strummer was depressed by both the album's sound and critical appraisal. Asked in 1986 how the reviews affected him, he replied: "Sure I read [them] but