X
Alphabetland

How much I loved X, the Los Angeles band that was my turntable's favorite throughout almost all of the 80s. Their music was lively and melodic punk, elegant and brimming with rock'n'roll, direct and frantically punk in its musical expression. The first two albums produced by Ray Manzarek of the Doors are genuine masterpieces, especially the debut -Los Angeles-. So, X is back on track after 35 years with a new album -Alphabetland. Love is a tricky thing because often it's nostalgia for something that can never return: so I thought to myself - why not listen to them? Of course, it's impossible to revive the energy and grandeur of that era, to recreate the explosive charge of their concerts, the somewhat dark poetic lyrics of Exene Cervenka… Already by listening to the first track of the album -Alphabetland- a broad smile lit up my face after exactly 5 seconds, and that's not so common these improbable days.

Going into detail: Billy Zoom has lost the rockabilly look of his youth, but the guitar is still his spinning tool; John Doe has maintained the bass with a motorcycling vibe; Bonebrake's arms are still quick in drumming; all the charisma of the anthem is there in the vocal duets of John Doe and Exene, which made them famous and inimitable… The keyboard of Ray Manzarek is no longer present, but Robby Krieger's call to the guitar in the last track passes the baton in the race of spiritual continuity with the Doors. Here they are, X, ignoring time and the wrinkles on their faces. Damn, the heaviness of the bodies is compensated by a sense of nostalgic lightness in the songs: I feel the romantic and emotional illusion of adolescence here. The entire album flows with this expressiveness, in a prodigious and captivating 80s punk showcases, personal, brilliant, incisive. I'm surprised to find -Cyrano De Berger’s Back-, a piece that John Doe sang with the Flesheaters in – A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die- in 1981. With -All the Time in the World- Cervenka closes the album in an unusual and jazzy spoken word. It is said that the song alludes to the premature death of her sister Mirielle, killed in an accident in 1980 while going to see an X show. Talking about death celebrates life through pain, because it's not true that everything passes and returns to the same as before. Who knows, maybe putting such a track at the end of the album is like taking another step forward, for in the end, life's call has no end. When I look at the misery of so much music today, I feel like saying this is a colossal album. An album to love, and if you buy it on vinyl, why not, to be worn out under the turntable’s needle. Stop. I'm 60 years old and a fan of X, and I want to age as they do. 1-2-3-4... I Gotta Fever... and this is -Love- not the coronavirus.