X - At Home With You LP

40th Anniversary Edition of 600 copies.

Features previously unseen photos by Ruby Davies, with an insert featuring liner notes by Steve Lucas.

Highly recommended.

At Home With You is a pure, unique drop of rocking spirit made by X. And the production by Oz music legend Lobby Loyde has certified this classic LP with a simple sound that remains fresh.

Bass player Ian Rilen left Rose Tattoo just as their first single, Rilen’s “Bad Boy for Love” was climbing the charts, and straight into a rehearsal with a couple of young unknowns in a church hall in Balmain. Nominally named Evil Rumours, the story goes they played so hard their guitars were covered in blood and thusly was X anointed.

X are one of the great punk trios of all time and make brutal anthems for the underclass. The original guitarist died of an overdose virtually even before the band got out of the blocks, but singer Steve Lucas took a crash course on guitar and for more than two decades he was one of Rilen’s most enduring musical partners.

At Home With You is about as unpretentious as music gets, (just have a look at the 'no frills' band photo on the album cover) but visceral to the extreme. Cathy Green's drumming swings with a vengeance, the guitar and singing is raw but melodic, and the bass punches out monster riffs with furious funk. The added horn section (courtesy of Hunters And Collectors) lifts some of these songs for a fuller sound than on the band's first record. And the lyrics are still permanent slaps in the face to middle-class claptrappery.

Degenerate Boy’s opening manic snarl: “I ain’t got no money, I ain't got no cents (sense), last week’s dole cheque, up my arm it went” is an anti-hero mission statement if ever there was one.

All songs on At Home With You are timeless blasts of brilliance from under the floorboards.