Like a lot of American punk / garage music of this time, X reference Fifties music both tonally and in terms of the teenage angst lyrics, but they go beyond both the Fifties pastiche style, and punk / post-punk style, and a lot of this is due to the vocal harmonies between bassist and vocalist John Doe, and vocalist Exene Cervenka.
On the track The Once Over Twice, for example, guitarist Billy Zoom gives us some Eddie Cochrane riffs, but the vocal harmonies take it to a higher place. And often these are proper harmonies, rather than two voices singing the same melody at a different pitch. This means that a track like In This House That I Call Home, while Zoom gives it a bit of a Bo Diddley beat, the vocals give it a slightly country music feel.
Their best tunes are the ones that don’t reference the Fifties at all. White Girl comes across almost like a Nirvana track, and feels a lot more timeless than some of the more rockabilly tunes. Although the lyrics tend towards the Fifties teen angst stuff, or the seemingly inconsequential, they sometimes go darker. Back 2 The Base is about a “man on the bus screaming about Presley” but the singer is “lying at the back of the bus with a hole in my throat”. Are they going “back to the base” because they’re soldiers returning from a tour of duty that’s messed them up? Or are they simply a night bus full of the usual assortment of oddballs? That ambiguity makes the track a lot more interesting.
I liked these guys. They sound more tuneful than the usual post-punk shouting or droning, not all the songs are ramped up rock and roll. And they still seem to be going, which is good.
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