X
Smoke & Fiction
Fat Possum
X’s Under The Big Black Sun was the first punk rock cassette I purchased. It was their third album. Friends and I had been passing around mixtapes of Flipper, The Specials, Devo, Black Flag, Squeeze. X didn’t make the cut, I guess. So that day in 1982, I parted company with hard-earned lawn mowing cash and I felt grandiose. Enlightened. One step beyond my friends still listening to wobbling C-60s. Might have been the same day I purchased my first copy of Trouser Press at a local inland Florida drugstore.
John Doe noted in The Decline of Western Civilization that X was lyrically addressing the “realistic” and not necessarily American hardcore’s grievances with the nation, state, or self. Sure, X had problems with the Reagan administration. But the members were older, so I’d learn. Much of Under The Big Black Sun was instead more personal or observational. Exene lamenting her sister’s untimely death and deep grievances with religion, family order, poverty seem ultimately apolitical concerns. That couple at the dive motel, the drunks at the bar, the losers, sometimes even winners — all were depicted candidly. Her exclamatory Wynette to Doe’s George duets were revelatory, adult, caustic, peppery, carnal. The influences of Bukowski and Carver are not hearsay, and further regarding lyric writing, Doe in a 2018 Santa Barbara Independent interview, said he and Exene, “just made a silent promise to each other that we were going to tell the truth — and we did.”
The band was always grounded in early American rock and roll and roots. Billy Zoom anchored their sound with rockabilly riffs a few steps outside Sun Records, adjacent to the approach of Poison Ivy. Live, Billy was mugging and smiling. X wasn’t deconstructing. Hardcore distilled sound. X threw their collective arms around the whole of Americana and, cracking, dirty fingernails and calluses be damned, they potently and often compassionately exposed the human condition. They lip-synced “Blue Spark” on Jerry Lewis’s 1982 Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, for heaven’s sake.
Ray Manzarek brought his Doors keyboard into the earlier albums he produced. Likewise, jazz stylings mixing among marimba, saxophone, and various border music references. ”True Love Pt 2” had a strange Doobies vibe. Across their 47 years with Zoom being in and out of the band, X occasionally found themselves in the valley, looking up to their peak. 2018’s Alphabetland assured that they were climbing.
This final studio album, Smoke & Fiction, adheres to their own box of recipes, folding in ingredients from songs they have written, e.g.: “The Hungry Wolf,” “Nausea,” “More Fun in the New World,” “Poor Girl,” or “Hothouse.” With Alphabetland’s producer again on board, Smoke & Fiction is spiritous as their 1980 debut, Los Angeles. D.J. Bonebrake’s drumming remains propulsive and colorful, never overdone. It swings when it needs to, maybe the way folks note Charlie Watts. Doe’s bass makes the music go bang, often melodically.
Lead single “Big Black X” invites us to recollect the band’s early days, the grind of touring, the view from a moving car, seeing or not seeing your band’s name on the marquee. Forgotten fantastic L.A., shot in black and white, proto-digitized: “Stay awake and don’t get taken / we knew the gutter / also the Future.”
Musically, “Struggle” recalls the muscular threat of “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline.” In contrast to the former song’s callousness, John and Exene posit a more ambiguous entanglement, declaring “We promise not to feel & then we do.”
“Smoke & Fiction” counters the proposed national schism. Certainly X members have deviated from expectations for “bonafide” underground stances. The duo pushed by a rat-a-tat snare pop, “still wish a bit” and “still talk about it” and “still pray a little bit, but there’s no words for this… there’s no cure for this.”
“The Way It Is” sways with minor/major chord changes. Think Stones-y spaghetti western. It’s a goodbye note, ink-smeared and moist from teardrops. John handles most vocals, Zoom’s tremolo bending strings to this: “The devil & the deep blue sea / stole you away from me / Now the moon has fallen down / and you are not around / that’s just the way it is / like moon & stars & sea/that’s just the way it is / we have to set you free / that’s just the way it is / the way it’s gonna be.” They did what they did.
As to critics of X’s members holding disparate views from media norms, it’s never too late to review the punk rules book…that was never written. As this album is officially their last, and because I’d never written about X, please pardon the word count. X marks the spot with an adieu that’s sentimental and cool.
