Vinyl Tap: X - Under The Big Black Sun

I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #34:

What goes between the eyes downtown
Blue Spark
Loudspeakers and search lights
...Blue Spark…

As energized and punk-raw as X’s first two albums, Los Angeles, and Wild Gift were, the bracing vigor and varied approach of 1982’s Under the Big Black Sun, their major label debut on Elektra, strikes with a major leap forward in sonic rock spark. The songs and vocals of John Doe and Exene Cervenka indeed ignites in an intensity of blare and glare that seems to hit you “between the eyes,” as the insistent shock and shudder of “Blue Spark” plays it out.

But it is in the predatory voraciousness of the lead-off track, “The Hungry Wolf," wherein X unleashes a mission statement of sorts. "I roam ready to tear up the world / I roam, I roam,” the group announces in the resolute and robust song, generously and assertively punctuated by D.J. Bonebrake’s front-and-center drums.

Part two of Black Sun’s opening one-two punch, “Motel Room In My Bed,” features the rockabilly-flavored rush of Billy Zoom’s guitar work, a force that comes in tinges or tumult -- such as in the hard-charging “Because I Do” -- throughout the album. Whatever the case, his solos and rhythmic drive somehow visually evoke Zoom in live performance, with his perpetual grin and splayed stance in perfect complement to his pompadour and circumstance, so to speak.

Moving on, “Riding With Mary” and “Come Back To Me” touch upon the death of Exene’s sister, killed by a drunk driver before the recording of the album. The ‘50s-style sound of the grieving “Come Back To Me” makes it — along with the Spanish-spiced infectiousness of a Tin Pan Alley cover, “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” — one of the most distinctive, and affecting, tracks on LP. Exene laments:

I built a shrine
For you on the kitchen wall
With flowers and Florida souvenirs
You were walking through the house last night
I knew it was you
From the space in your steps.
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Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, when not engaged in serious lollygagging. …

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