X: More Fun In The New World : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This furious, fuzz-amped tear through the lives of the underclass and the willfully decadent comes close to justifying every extravagant claim ever made for this Los Angeles band. Without closing their eyes to the griéf around them, X has supplanted the melancholia of Under the Big Black Sun with a firm determination to have fun. More Fur in the New World, the group's fourth LP, is an album of keen observations and vibrantly played music whose breadth and compassion may finally win X the audience they deserve.

Such straight-ahead slammers as "Devil Doll" or the witty "Make the Music Go Bang" are a piece of cake for this outfit, but there's more happening on this album than the admirable wall of thrash erected by guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. Lyrically, songwriters John Doe and Exene Cervenka have kept their observations close to home, enabling them to score some telling points without going for the big statement. A good example is "The New World," in which some prickly observations about Reaganomics and elections are made by focusing on a bum who can't get a drink because it's Election Day. "It was better before, before they voted for what's-his-name," he grumbles.

X is less successful when they take on radio. In "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," they solemnly intone the names of their fellow ignored-by-radio groups: the Minutemen, Flesh Eaters, D.O.A. Well-intentioned as it seems, the gesture comes off as whiny. Still, that clunker can't obscure the surprising sensitivity of Doe's singing on the minor-keyed "Poor Girl" or the whammo "Hot House." Either track should vault X onto the playlists. But who's to say? Maybe it'll take the oldies pastiche "True Love Pt.#2," in which we learn that "True love is the Land of a Thousand Dances ... Be-Bop-a-Lula ... a hunk-a-hunk-a Burning Love...." It's a rousing closer for the LP, because it shows that X, like the punk movement that spawned them, isn't some pop-hating musical aberration. They're a proud part of rock & roll, and More Fun in the New World can only enhance their growing reputation.