In a year of chaos, one of the best things that happened was when L.A. punk veterans X surprise-released a new album with their original members. Alphabetland was the ripping album we needed in the early pandemic days and thankfully, a few new tunes from those sessions have emerged.
On Tuesday morning, X revealed B-sides “True Love, Pt. 3” and “Strange Life,” with the latter song featuring none other than the Doors’ Robby Krieger on slide guitar.
“Robby came down on our last day in the studio and played on ‘Strange Life’. How fitting and how wondrous! And can there ever be enough ‘True Love’?” Exene Cervenka said in a statement. “Writing this reminds me of how much fun it was being in the studio with Rob Schnapf. He is a great producer and really helped make Alphabetland happen.”
Listen to the songs below:
Around the time of the album’s release, we spoke with John Doe about the album, which was supposed to arrive as X was set to embark on a tour that would celebrate the release of their landmark album Los Angeles.
“We were going to the same thing we’ve done in the past,” Doe told SPIN in April. “Mix it, master it, get everything lined up and put it out in September. Then we realized how timely the music — more lyrics — and that people can appreciate and use something like this now, so we talked to the record company and they said yeah since they had no idea when the printing service would be open again. So fuck it, we’re indie so let’s go indie.”
He added, “The other thing that pushed us to do it was because it was the 40th anniversary of the release of our first record, Los Angeles. It all kind of ties in.”
