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**X - More Fun In The New World**
★★★★☆

By 1983, X had already carved out their place as Los Angeles punk royalty, but the world around them was shifting faster than a Sunset Strip hustler dodging rent. Reagan was in the White House, MTV was rewiring teenage brains, and the scrappy punk scene that birthed them was either going corporate or going underground. Into this maelstrom came *More Fun In The New World*, an album that found America's greatest punk band grappling with success, maturity, and the uncomfortable realisation that the revolution might be televised after all.

The seeds of this album were planted in the aftermath of 1982's *Under The Big Black Sun*, which had seen the band achieve their most cohesive artistic statement while dealing with the tragic death of Exene Cervenka's sister. That personal devastation had focused their songwriting laser-sharp, but by the time they entered the studio with producer Ray Manzarek once again, the world felt different. The underground was becoming overground, and X found themselves caught between their punk roots and major label expectations.

What emerged was their most sonically adventurous record yet, a collection that pushed beyond the rockabilly-tinged punk of their earlier work into something more expansive and, yes, more fun. The opening salvo of "The New World" sets the tone immediately – Exene and John Doe's intertwining vocals snake around Billy Zoom's crystalline guitar work while DJ Bonebrake's drums pound out a rhythm that's part punk urgency, part roots rock swagger. It's X alright, but X with their eyes on a bigger prize.

The album's masterstroke is "Breathless", a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis's piano-pumping classic that shouldn't work but absolutely does. Where the Killer's original was all sweaty desperation, X transforms it into something simultaneously reverent and subversive, with Exene's yelping vocals adding a feminist twist to the sexual frustration. It's the sound of a punk band discovering they can honour their influences without being enslaved by them.

"The Have Nots" finds the band in classic agitprop mode, but there's a weariness creeping in around the edges that suggests the endless struggle is taking its toll. When Doe snarls about economic inequality, you believe every word, but there's also a sense that shouting into the void might not be enough anymore. It's punk rock for the morning after the revolution failed to materialise.

The title track serves as both mission statement and epitaph for an era, with its sardonic take on American optimism feeling particularly prescient in hindsight. "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" operates as the album's emotional centrepiece, a stream-of-consciousness meditation on media overload and cultural anxiety that predates our current information age malaise by decades. Exene's delivery veers between vulnerable and defiant, often within the same line, while the music builds from whispered confession to cathartic release.

Musically, the band had never sounded tighter or more adventurous. Zoom's guitar work throughout is a masterclass in economy and impact, finding the space between rockabilly flash and punk minimalism. His solos on tracks like "True Love Pt. 2" manage to be both technically impressive and emotionally resonant, no mean feat in a genre that often privileges passion over precision.

The production, courtesy of Doors keyboard wizard Manzarek, gives the songs room to breathe while maintaining the claustrophobic intensity that made X special. There's a clarity here that some purists found too polished, but it serves the songs well, allowing subtle details to emerge that might have been buried in a more deliberately lo-fi approach.

*More Fun In The New World* would prove to be X's commercial peak, but more importantly, it captured a band at the height of their powers grappling with what it meant to be punk in an increasingly corporate world. The album's influence can be heard in everyone from Sonic Youth to Green Day, bands who learned from X that evolution doesn't have to mean compromise.

Nearly four decades later, the album feels both of its time and timeless, a snapshot of a band refusing to be pinned down by expectations or genre limitations. In a world that often demands artists stay in their lane, *More Fun In The New World* remains a thrilling reminder that the best art happens when boundaries become suggestions rather than rules.