(Translated from my old Italian text by Nicholas Green)
X-Ray Spex boasted one of the most mature sounds of 1977, a sound ravaged by the disjointed hallucinations of singer Poly Styrene (Marianne Elliot-Said, daughter of a Somali immigrant) and the abrasive saxophone of Lora Logic (Susan Whitby).
Oh Bondage Up Yours! (1977) was their first anthem on dehumanization, followed by a whole series of harsh invectives against modern life, largely collected on
Germfree Adolescents (Awesome, 1978 - Virgin, 1991 -
Castle Music, 2005).
The main drive of the group is that of punk, but their sensibility (not very political and very grim) made them approach, if anything, the emerging gothic inclinations of dark-punk in a punk-rock key. The frenzied and very young vocalist blows her voice out on
The Day The World Turned Dayglo,
over Jak Airport's guitar boogie and Rudi Thompson's melodic saxophone phrases. The rest of the record contains variations on the same theme, at one moment leaning on the giddy rock'n'roll of the New York Dolls on Obsessed With You,
at another reclaiming the rebellious anthems of early rock'n'roll in
Let's Submerge (similar to Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay and so many other 1950s tunes), and at yet another speeding up Black Sabbath on I am A Poseur.
The saxophone was a vital component of their punk rock. For as bombastic and grandiloquent as they were
(Identity, Warrior In Woolworths), their proclamations of alienation served to launch countless subgenres of post-punk, as inclined to horror as to science fiction.
Poly Styrene would go on to launch a solo career with the album
Translucence (UA, 1980)
but her unexpected conversion from punk witch to lounge cocktail chanteuse soon made her forgettable. Nevertheless her EP Gods And Godesses (Awesome, 1986) still featured one memorable number, Trick Of The Witch.
Saxophonist Lora Logic fared better, as a Daevid Allen-esque naive space rocker with an eye towards Zappa's Dadaist pastiches and feminist appeals.
She formed Essential Logic, whose spontaneous and indistinct sound especially shines on the 45s
Aerosol Burns, Popcorn Boy Waddle Ya Do?, Music Is A Better Noise,
Eugene (1981) and Fanfare In The Garden (1981).
As a solo artist she released the album Pedigree Charm (Rough Trade, 1982).
Logic's entire oeuvre would be compiled on Fanfare In The Garden
(Kill Rock Stars, 2003).
A reunion of X-Ray Spex yielded
Conscious Consumer (1995).
The Anthology (Castle, 2002) is a career anthology.
Let's Submerge (Castle Music, 2006) is a two-CD anthology.
Poly Styrene had barely time to release her first solo album
Generation Indigo (2011), that includes the
synth-pop rant Virtual Boyfriend and
the a-cappella gospel-jazz chant Electric Blue Monsoon,
before she died in 2011 of cancer at the age of 53.
