When X first came on the scene in 1980 they were hardscrabble punk poets who had the good fortune to be noticed by former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who was always a sucker for a band that wore their Doors influences on their sleeve. Those first four X albums (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under The Big Black Sun, and More Fun in the New World), all produced by Manzarek, still stand at the top of the Los Angeles punk scene from the late 1970s and 1980s. They were less aggressive than Black Flag, more tuneful than the Circle Jerks, less obnoxious than Fear, and, unlike the Germs, had written actual songs with melodies and choruses. Their combination of poetic lyrics, a punk rock rhythm section, and a Chuck Berry-loving rockabilly guitar player were unlike anything else on the scene. Their vocal harmonies were borrowed from Jefferson Airplane, their lyrical content from Jim Morrison. Though they came from the hardcore punk rock underground, that had more to do with their location than their actual sound. They were punk in attitude, but a rock and roll band in practice.
Unfortunately, X then signed to a major label and fell into the hands of less sympathetic producers than Manzarek. In the mid-80s all the rough edges were sanded down and X started to sound like every other band on the planet. Many of the songs were good, but the production was just awful and completely generic. Shortly after, guitarist Billy Zoom decided to retire from the music business. By the time the alternative rock explosion of the early 1990s was happening, they were barely performing or recording and they split.
It was a surprise when X announced a new album in 2020, and an absolute shock when Alphabetland was so good. The rough edges were back, the songwriting was as good as ever, Billy Zoom was back. In 30 minutes, X issued a defiant statement to the usual second-rate reunion album. While it may not quite measure up to X classics like Los Angeles or Under the Big Black Sun, it’s clearly a return to form for a mostly forgotten band.
Smoke & Fiction picks up where their previous release, Alphabetland, left off and proceeds to surpass that effort. This is X sounding as good as they ever did. I don’t know whether they had any “help” in the studio, but both John Doe and Exene Cervenka sound the same as they did in 1980, and Billy Zoom reels off one great guitar part after another.
From the opening whiplash riff and tight guitar solo of “Ruby Church” to the Chuck-Berry-on-speed recurring lick that marks the chorus transition of “Baby & All,” X races through one of the year’s best albums in less than 30 minutes. Along the way there are several self-referential lyrics that reflect on their career.
“We were never just kids/We did what we did/To set each other free” they harmonize in “The Way It Is.” It could be about a relationship but easily doubles as a look back to the band that was featured in the 1981 Penelope Spheeris documentary about the L.A. punk scene The Decline of Western Civilization. In “Big Black X” they complete the circle to their first album with a reminiscence of their career (“Drivin’ state to altered state/Holdin’ foldin’ maps/On another pay phone break/A big black X on a white marquee”) and a love song to the city of Los Angeles 44 years ago, when the Hollywood sign was in disrepair and the Hillside Strangler was making his presence known. “We knew the gutter,” they sing, but “also the future.”
But it’s not all backwards-looking. On “Sweet Til The Bitter End,” the second track on the album but really the spiritual kickoff, they state “Let’s go around the bend/Get in trouble again/Make a commotion.” On the terrific title song, Exene sings of the fire that still burns inside her: “My soul still goes out walking/Over bridges that are burning/There’s lessons I keep learning/All the leaves are turning” before calling out faith in faithless times (“I still pray a little bit/But there’s no saint for this”).
Even the slower songs (“Face in the Moon,” “The Way It Is”) have power behind them. “Face in the Moon” rides a chugging riff as John Doe sings again about California, flying into Los Angeles from San Francisco and driving down the Hollywood freeway. It is, as always with X, an unflinching look at a California they love, but that they also feel is doomed: “From the freeway to the sky/You get your way with a thousand lies/An ugly life that seems so pretty/Stealing through this tin can city.”
Smoke & Fiction is, according to the band, their final effort. It’s as good a way to go out as any. X compromised their sound in the mid-80s under pressure from corporate suits but on their final two albums, released 27 and 31 years respectively after 1993’s Hey Zeus, they managed to do a nearly impossible feat: release new music that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with their music from nearly a half century ago, when they were young, talented, and burning with ambition. If you want to call them punk because they emerged from the same Los Angeles club scene that birthed hardcore, then they’re America’s greatest punk band. I prefer to think of them as just a rock and roll band with some punk rock nuance. Even with that broader classification they’re still one of America’s best bands.
Grade: A
A simple drum beat opens the festivities here, accompanied by various grunts from the singer who’s warming up in the wings, before the incredibly loud, magisterial organ comes in. Spooky Tooth has arrived and, with them, the beginnings of the Progressive Rock movement that would flower in the following years.
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