Ain't Love Grand, the fifth and last album by the original X line up before guitarist Billy Zoom would depart from the band to go off and make a living doing other things, may in fact be one of the biggest missteps in the history of punk rock. Having spent their first four albums making some of the most creative and energetic rock n roll to come out of Los Angeles in the long history of bands to come out of Los Angeles, Ain't Love Grand marks the end of a lot of things for X, but doesn't mark the beginning of anything new. It's simply a dreary, gutless, souless, slick production that finds the band going over the top in hopes of wider mainstream success and failing miserably on all counts. This album is the sound of a band well out of their element, and it's a place X would thankfully not find themselves again.
The album kicks off with the bouncy pop/rock of "Burning House Of Love", one of the better songs on the album, and there is hope that perhaps this is simply a ringer thrown in the mix in an attempt to garner some wide spread appeal. But it's obvious by the next track "Love Shack", a bombastic dirge of a song, that the first was no fluke, and over the next couple of tracks it becomes clear. X had made a whole album worth of half baked songs with a metal/glam producer and soundman (Micheal Wagener, who had worked on albums for the likes of Dokken, Motley Crue and Great White, and would go on to mix and record albums for Poison and Metallica, among others) and they were dead serious, going about their business with a completely straight face. Too bad their fans were laughing in disbelief, or crying their punk rock eyes out.
After the lackluster meandering throw away "My Soul Cries Your Name" and half way decent ballad "My Goodness" comes the plodding "Around My Heart", and the albums theme becomes apparent. This is in fact an album of relationship songs. Certainly nothing new for songwriters John Doe and Exene Cervenka, and something that made X unique among punk rock bands. But on this album the songwriting is restrained and cliched, using cheesy lyrical hooks in the choruses and burying the once wild and intimite vocal harmonies of the once vibrant vocal duo under a sheen of sugary sludge, as well as burying the music under the same. Not once does the music go bang. Not once is it brilliant, shining and nasty. Their is nothing compelling here. Nothing notable. Just the sound of a band sitting in a pretty car with four flat tires. All dressed up with nowhere to go.
The second half of the album kicks off with a bit more promise as "What's Wrong With Me" get's things off to an uptempo rockin start, and despite it's bombastic sugar coated production, the bite and spirit of the song comes through in it's lyrics and hard hitting music. And for the first and last moment on the album we glimpse just a little of what made this band great. If just a little. Next up is the tiresome and cliched "All Or Notihng" and the bouncy and reflective "Watch The Sun Go Down", a song about romantic acceptence and finding a place in life, and the sweet and heartfelt "I'll Stand Up For You", which is one of the few highlights on the album, if for it's lyrics and tone and nothing more. The album wraps up with the two generic rockers "Little Honey" and "Supercharged", and that's it. Eleven songs of compromised, watered down, middle of the road, mid tempo recordings that are mere shadows of all this bands previous output. Which makes Ain't Love Grand all the more shocking to hear for the first or hundreth time. It just makes you shake your head in one big "WTF"?
Perhaps not a terrible album by it's own generic hard rock standards, but certainly a poor album by X standards, Ain't Love Grand today stands as a cautionary tale for any band who might think compromise, slick production values, and a toned down approach to punk rock might be a recipe for wider commercial success. Sounding very much like what they were on this album, this is the sound of a fish out of water doing it's best to cover up that fact with polished over produced recordings and bombastic pop metal hooks. It's a misstep X fans would forgive the group for and eventually get past to move forward with the band once again. And X would in fact return from this album a changed but very respectable band. But for one brief moment in time they did succumb to the commercial powers that be. And this is the evidence.
In the end "Ain't Love Grand" doesn't sell this band out, nor does it find them buying in. It's simply a stagnent, sugary, over produced stick in the mud which is thankfully easily forgetten and overlooked in the X catalogue. And thankfully it's a place the band would not and have not returned to date. I myself never venture there. And nor should you.
