Listening Station: X, Graham Coxon, Sage Francis, Hawthorne Heights

Double album retrospective finally gives X its due

Make the Music Go Bang

Rebels without applause, the members of X never let their lack of success swell their heads. Heroes to a rabid but minuscule cult following--including every rock critic at the Los Angeles Times--they cut a series of certifiable masterpieces (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, and More Fun in the New World) in the early 1980s. None of them dented the record charts, but the quality of their songs and live shows assured them notoriety as the greatest neglected footnote in rock history--a band that became famous for its obscurity.

X was doomed by an odd series of converging circumstances: One, the earnest apathy of an entire generation of listeners. Two, the open hostility of mainstream radio. Three, the band's own stubborn refusal to discard its incorrect classification as "punk." And four, its noble desire to forge a career in an era of cutthroat nihilism.

Despite that cruel fate, X has found artistic redemption. Finally packaged by Rhino as the greatest band of its era, the band has released Make the Music Go Bang, a two-CD collection of its most memorable songs.

Led by a husband-and-wife songwriting team, X burrowed into the dingy heart of eternally nocturnal Los Angeles. Mingling with the feral demons that prowled the city's squalid streets, X erected a musical and lyrical landscape that was equal parts Chuck Berry, Black Flag, Woody Guthrie, Bo Diddley, Jim Morrison, Charles Bukowski and Merle Haggard.

Bathed in the dynamic fury of guitarist Billy Zoom's apocalyptic classicism and propelled by the tempered anarchy of drummer D. J. Bonebrake, John Doe and Exene Cervenka disgorged a slew of soul-scorching melodies about drug addiction ("Johnny Hit and Run Paulene"), corrosive lust ("Hungry Wolf"), incendiary heartache ("Burning House of Love" and "Love Shack") and political ennui ("The New World" and "See How We Are"). Linked together, these songs reflect the scalding pessimism of the disenchanted minority that refused to goose-step to the virulent jingoism of the Reagan era.

Driven by its fervent belief in hopelessness and the cleansing depths of the abyss, X attempted to create a legacy in an era that disdained permanence and scorned the future. These two CDs are the monument X's talents always deserved and the testament that sanctifies its blistering vision of paradise unredeemed.--Robert Chancey

Graham Coxon

Happiness in Magazines

It's hard to say why Graham Coxon' s fifth solo album got so much attention in the English rock press last year. After all, his previous solo albums--made when he wasn't playing guitar for Blur, which he quit in 2002--were often derided for their under-produced, lo-fi aesthetic and unaccomplished songwriting. Yet, it seems Coxon has thrown everyone a curveball. On Happiness in Magazines, produced by former Blur producer Stephen Street, the band-less indie auteur steps up to the mic, best voice forward, turns off most of the fuzzboxes and presents 13 songs that actually sound as if they were worked on and finessed for more than two hours. We're talking Britpop-caliber melodies and even a few college radio candidates here, especially the strummy "Bittersweet Bundle of Misery" (think "Coffee and TV" from Blur's 13) and punkish "Freakin' Out." Granted, some of those pleasures aren't realized until multiple spins. And Coxon's lyric rhymes are obvious, if not painful. But there's a definite sense of effort here. And it's certainly more enjoyable than Think Tank.--Mike Prevatt

Sage Francis

A Healthy Distrust

Usually when you're reading a review of a rapper's new CD, the critic will quote a lyric to illustrate the emcee's skills with wordplay, or maybe a particularly poignant sample to show a tough guy's more introspective side.

But it's impossible to capture these elements by typing a few lines from Sage Francis' first album on Epitaph Records, A Healthy Distrust. Francis spits more witty turns of phrase and vivid verbal snapshots of his life on a single track than most rappers could ever offer. And what's most impressive is the way Francis bends hip-hop to fit his own purposes; this may be the only time you'll ever hear a white rapper not trying to sound black.

Atop intoxicatingly ominous beats provided by the likes of Dangermouse, Sixtoo and Reanimator, among others, Francis' unique, growling cadence is at first hard to process. That's because it's different, and our radio-fucked, pop-rap ears have to adjust. Once acclimated, you'll hear stories of cartoonish patriotism, dysfunctional family life, political target practice, commercial and pharmaceutical enslavement and overall tough living. And he calls God a bitch.

"They've said it every year, but this time it seems like the end is near/ And I'm in the line to see the light. How far does this black tunnel go?" Francis says softly over sad pianos that open "Crumble." This tunnel digs deeper than most, far enough to get under the music and expose the dark, twisted roots of the artist.--Brock Radke

Hawthorne Heights

The Silence in Black and White

Amid the scales and meters in the dusty garage workshop of a critic's soul, there's a gauge that registers when a musical genre has just become comically, maddeningly formulaic. And leave it up to Hawthorne Heights' The Silence in Black and White to trip this rock hack's needle into the red and send steam blasting from pipes and ducts. Less a band than a bundle of musical platitudes tied together with naked bandwagon spirit, Hawthorne Heights embodies so many cheap metalcore gimmicks that it inspires an equally hackneyed vision of some cartoonish, Monty Python-esque industrial facility stamping out metalcore clones--just a few conveyor belts down from the ones stamping out white-girl pop divas and crunk rhyme-barkers: Ka-chung! Atreyu. Ka-chung! Dead to Fall. Ka-chung! Hawthorne Heights.

Oh, Silence isn't musically atrocious or anything; such extremity would require a sense of musical will the band so sorely lacks. Rather, songs such as "Life on Standby" and "The Transition" valiantly dog-paddle above the waterline of talent-show competence, the kind of rock numbers for which you can all too easily imagine the videos (self-consciously grainy black-and-white fake Super-8 stuff, etc., preening angst, etc., wearisome post-teen ardor, etc.). But gawd, the cliches: the dual screamed-and-sung lyrics, the '80s-tribute metal guitar lines, the machine-polished vocal harmonies, the stomper choruses. What to do but fight cliche with cliche? Silence goes into the pile destined for trade-in at the record store.--Andrew Kiraly