• I have actually only heard this one album by X, and a live album. Both are good.

• Strengths: most of the songs are really good. The Unheard Music is the most underrated masterpiece on here, beautiful lyrics that are like a thesis of the entire underground/alternative scene. I first heard the song in an infamous X-Files episode where Mulder sleeps with a vampire who is into self-harm. It was playing in the club frequented by vampires. Grimes should cover this song as a medley with Kill v Maim.

The lyrics are barely discernable in the mix (or live versions, which are even better) so I will put them all here:

friends warehouse pain attack their own kind a thousand kids bury their parents there's laughing outside we're locked out of the public eye some smooth chords on the car radio no hard chords on the car radio we set the trash on fire and watch outside the door men come up the pavement under the marquee there's laughing inside we're locked out of the public eye

• Weaknesses: like most early punk, the album contains some lyrics that either sincerely promote far right views, or observes them with some sympathy designed to get a rise out of the liberal listener. Punk is inherently anti-liberal, in reaction to hippies. This was perhaps especially true of LA punk, because nowhere on earth had the hippies "sold out" and discredited liberalism so much as in Hollywood (I mean, both Manson and Polanski were flower children). However, while subsequent waves of punk tended toward leftism and anti-racism in the way they attack liberalism, early punk tends toward flirting with racism and fascism in their attacks on the liberal order, as seen in the title song, written from the perspective of a racist character who hates the city for its diversity.

Is the character's view of "n-----s" shared by the band? Probably not. But they were still comfortable (or... uncomfortable? which was the whole point?) singing about the evils of n-----s (and plenty of other marginalized groups) in a song whose satiric intent, if any, probably went over the heads of half the people at their shows. Given the connection of punk shows with the rise of violent fascist gangs, that was pretty dumb idea if they genuinely disagree with that character's asssessment of LA. So, unfortunately, it's possible they partially agreed at the time.

Since punk is inherently anti-liberal, and early punk and postpunk is almost always right wing, Los Angeles is about as good as the genre can get. It's also refreshing that the racism is not buried under layers of pompous hidden Nazi imagery as usual for the UK bands, but right there on the surface. The album is honest about where its creators are coming from and I would say it's absolutely deserving of its classic rock status. Is it subversive art? No.