Legendary Los Angeles rockers X have announced that they’re hanging it up, but not before some new music and a party. The band will be releasing Smoke & Fiction on August 2 via Fat Possum, and will subsequently be embarking on a massive tour to say farewell to all the friends they made along the way. Ahead of the new LP, the band has also unveiled “Big Black X,” a nervy and driving punk track filled with barking guitars and firecracker snare drums.
Singer Exene recalls the band’s early days in the lyrics, which she expanded on in X’s farewell message. “X is a great band name; also a bad idea sometimes when it gets lost in print or on the marquee. Gotta have a sense of humor. We all did in the early days. Los Angeles was a carnival of weirdness back then, with left over traces of silent movie stars, long haired hippies, bikers, and brand new self-defined punks doing anything we wanted. When we started touring the country we found like-minded people everywhere, and somehow they all found us. Even if the X was lost on the old marquee.”
Check out the visual for “Big Black X” below, pre-order Smoke & Fiction here, and view the band’s last tour dates here. You can also watch Dwight Yoakam honoring the band at their show at the Troubadour last night here.
