It is difficult to write this review of X’s final album for many reasons, some I won’t go into. In  a way, since they are the last band standing from the OG Los Angeles punk rock scene with all original members intact it is like saying goodbye to the last pure vestige of something that meant so much to me and many others. It is bittersweet but musically they are going out on a note I am happy to hear. 

X wasn’t quite the first punk band I saw live. While in the 7th grade I was introduced to, and  really liked Ramones and Sex Pistols. I was still firmly a fan of what was called hard rock. I  liked bands like The Sweet, Thin Lizzy, The New York Dolls and Aerosmith while discovering  newer bands like Starz and Angel but also creeping up were oddball bands like Cheap Trick  and AC/DC and I paid dearly from the jock bully boys for preferring these bands to their  beloved Pink Floyd. As dearly as when I was picked on for loving KISS. While at a Battle Of  The Bands staged at a local park in my hometown of Santa Maria, California I saw the usual  type of cover bands that were available to play the county fair and wedding receptions  dealing in Stevie Knicks era Fleetwood Mac covers and attempts at pop/R&B. But two  bands stood out. One consisted of some biker looking dudes on meth who played some  excellent covers of Creem and Sabbath while the other was an all-original trio stationed at  the nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base. The bass player was tall with short, slicked back  hair and a Charlie Chaplin mustache playing a Rickenbacker and looked like Ron Mael  from Sparks, another band I had just discovered that the jocks at school hated. The  guitarist was wearing a mechanic’s jump suit and a visor playing a Gibson Flying V. They  were a punk band and I remember they were amazing and helped push me into exploring  punk beyond Ramones and the Pistols. After collecting a lot of punk records I reached the  age where me and my friends could manage to get hold of a car and X and Los Plugz from  Los Angeles were booked to do a gig at a movie theatre in nearby Santa Barbara and  someone lied to their parents and off we headed. While we had certainly heard of Los Plugz  we could not get any of their records in our small town but X’s Los Angeles record popped  up at Cheap Thrills, the local record store, so we were looking forward to seeing them in  person. It was one of those life changing events. 

Shortly after, things and X started to change. My friends were getting into harder sounding  bands while X offered up Wild Gift for their second release. I loved it but my friends thought  they had gone soft. I stayed with them through the third record but by then I too was looking  for things more challenging and X had started to achieve some success in the real music world. After their original guitarist had left I lost touch with them completely and they had  started to take on the whole Americana thing to a whole different audience from the rowdy  punk days. 

Which brings us to now. In 2020 the original lineup got back to the studio and released the  excellent Alphabetland, a record that saw them return to the energy of their first record  without losing the finesse of things they had picked up on the latter records. It was almost  miraculous. They started to draw back older fans and gain younger fans who had only 

heard about them. And now they have released a new album that will be their final release  while playing their final live dates. 

Starting off with Ruby Church, they make it clear Alphabetland was no fluke. And there are  certain things they do like having Sweet Til The End start out echoing the opening of their  cover of The Doors Soul Kitchen. Not all the songs are rockers but the energy level is high  throughout. They still have that sound mystique evocative of a gnarlier side of John Fante’s  Ask The Dust and that is what originally set them apart from the other LA bands. Poetic  lyrics that were easier to grasp than the high art of Darby Crash but above the regular  person lyrics of Los Plugz and The Alleycats. Drummer DJ Bonebrake and bassist John Doe  can still provide muscular rhythms for the guitarist to weave his rockabilly licks and  cranked chords over and the trademark male/female vocals are as pleasing as ever. And  like Alphabetville it clocks in at under 30 minutes so it doesn’t wear out its welcome. In a  way it is sad to see them go, but I am glad they are going out in top form rather than  becoming a nostalgia act wheezing out a few more lackluster records for the dough. This is  the way.