X: Under The Big Black Sun : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Unlike a lot of the groups that have emerged from the West Coast hard-core-punk scene, X has always represented something more than the witless, reflexive violence of suburban L.A.'s disenchanted progeny. As they've enlarged upon their darkly compelling inner visions, and even landed a major-label contract, there has been cawing from certain squalid quarters that they've sold out. Good for them–they're far too talented to labor away in obscurity on behalf of someone else's wrongheaded ideal.

America needs to hear this album. It's been many years since the country has germinated a group with so strikingly original a sound–yet one that, in fact, draws upon many native elements. What sets X apart is their unique approach to vocal harmony. John Doe and Exene Cervenka have given rock a new twist: their voices slither over, under and around each other, sometimes gliding in unison or striking a perfect interval, sometimes forking into fractured atonality. The intricate, organic way they thread their voices recalls the Jefferson Airplane at their bold, early best–and then some.

Under the Big Black Sun is an album of visceral glimpses into the heart of the night, leavened by a salving dose of existential humor. There is an aura of the underworld to the lyrics, evoking the nervous feeling of being awake in the wee hours in an unfamiliar place, with some elusive, mortal peril lurking nearby. In both a literal and figurative sense, death is a constant, hovering presence: figuratively, in the shadowy metaphor of the big black sun and in the spiritual death of adultery and other crimes of passion; literally, in the very real death of Exene's sister last year in a car crash. The sheer speed of the music offers a kind of salvation, however. Guitarist Billy Zoom kicks up a musical blitzkrieg, cutting loose with his best Chuck Berry-in-outer-space licks, while the John Doe-Don Bonebrake rhythm section flails away with a furious, whip-cracking energy. If you can never completely escape the specter of death, X seems to be saying, at least you can dance your way free for a while.

This is some of the fastest music you'll ever hear (check out "Motel Room in My Bed"), and if X doesn't offer a credo as bracingly blasphemous as "We're desperate Get used to it" (from Wild Gift, their last LP), they evince a surefootedness, a throttling punch, that's deliriously subversive. At the same time, they've extended their reach, slowing down the tempo for a sweet, Fifties-style in memoriam to Mary Cervenka ("Come Back to Me") and recontextualizing Leadbelly for the Eighties ("Dancing with Tears in My Eyes").

With the intrepid fervor of true believers, X is capable of moving from upbeat, quasi-rockabilly riffing to mysterioso, Doors-like night flights, from the ragged folk harmonies of the Carter Family to the Jagged edges of punk. They're the only group I know of that can embrace Bo Diddley and Charles Bukowski in the same breath. At this, they are without peer.