featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
August 6, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
X are calling it a day. John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake, the original quartet reunited for 2020's Alphabetland, are gathering for one final tour, one last album. Since their 1977 founding, X have straddled the city of LA, mythologizing it and shining their shaky light into the dark corners. Standing above LA like the Hollywood sign. Just as iconic.
X are arguably unique in our kind of music. They defined punk with the buzz and energy of the Ramones, but also pointed back to Chuck Berry. They found a place in insurgent country, and were essential to that link we've always identified between punk and roots music. This might be most evident on their excellent 1995 live, stripped back set, Unclogged, and of course in their music with Dave Alvin as The Knitters. And yet X have never really sacrificed one iota of their punk bona fides. They were both a product of their time and an act that could sound both retro and futuristic, without ever seeming out of touch.
Produced by Rob Schnapf who also oversaw Alphabetland, Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum) plays true to tradition, as much a nod to the early days of Los Angeles and Wild Gift as the band could have made at this point in their hagiography. There is not one new idea or unfamiliar note, but as mentioned by John Doe in an interview, it's a retrospective, not an exercise in nostalgia or sentiment. Billy Zoom's rockabilly-born guitar grinds and saws, while DJ Bonebrake's primal drums pound reliably. X has never been an experimental band. There are not ballads, no formal goodbyes, though the entirety of Smoke & Fiction is an exercise in looking back.
At their most tuneful, "The Way It Is" features Doe and Cervenka's iconic harmonies atop stabs of guitar: We were never just kids / But we were pretty young / We did what we did just to get along / That's just the way it was. Songs like "Flipside" would not sound out of place on the band's late 80s radio-friendly collections, with Exene taking lead: On the flipside of you / Everything's blurry / I'm in no hurry / Loaded and railroaded / Empty and exploded. The singers' voices are still a wonder, dovetailing in a way all their own, perfectly imperfect, balancing on the brink of dissonance.
While each member of X is capable of loftier artistry, simplicity has always been part of the quartet's appeal. "Ruby Church" and "Sweet Til the Bitter End" open Smoke & Fiction with racing rhythms and no nonsense lyrics. Exene Cervenka's beat-inspired poetry remains sharp and evocative on "Big Black X": A big black X on a white marquee / A naked Christmas tree on fire / In a Cherokee alley. The song also features a mumbled recitation by John Doe, as well as a brief moment acknowledging their own vision: We knew the gutter / And also the future.
Of course, more than any of his bandmates John Doe has continued to create music, a very regular and reliable americana/alt.country presence. In X, he has always played the relative straight man to his partner's less conventional tendencies. But "Baby and All" and the title cut remind us that there is no X without both poles, the dark and the light, the tension that hasn't resolved to this day: The stars out tonight / Never burn so bright / From our perch above / We send all our love / As we start to fall / Baby and all.
There's no shortage of terrific online accounts of X's early live electricity. You'll want to spend some time with a scrapbook-like documentary from 1986, X: the Unheard Music, especially for scenes where that quartet are just hanging out while their music shakes up the status quo, where John and Exene are practicing their harmonies by singing "Ramblin' Man" and "Honkytonk Blues" from a tattered songbook, or when Billy Zoom is noodling away on a piece that evokes Django Reinhardt. See also John Doe's indispensable pair of oral histories of the birth and death of the LA punk scene: Under the Big Black Sun and More Fun In the New World. Smoke & Fiction is remarkable in its ability to simply serve as a wayfinder, a big black X on the map of popular music. The Hollywood letters, falling down.
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