More Fun In The New World was a far more polished record than X had put out previously. The band’s second outing on a major label was meant to propel them into the mainstream and to finally achieve some commercial success such as Green did for R.E.M. a few years later. Unfortunately the cleaner direction of the album suffered much the same fate as Diamond Head’s Canterbury and Bow Wow Wow’s When The Going Get’s Tough… records by alienating a large proportion of their audiences that had found the band so appealing in the first place. Fortunately for X the press loved the new direction and reviews were on the whole not just positive but positively ecstatic, generating new fans that meant the band’s popularity didn’t wane, it simply had a less punky face when they played live.
In places you can hear a country influence which doesn’t always work as well as it could do. Sorry to mention it again but R.E.M. achieved a far more impressive sonic and interesting version of what X was trying to get across within their album here a few years later but when X hit the spot, usually when John Doe’s and Exene Cervenka’s vocals are combined, it is a delightful sound. The combination of male and female works despite the lack of harmonies. It’s as if each singer sang the song on their own in the studio and then both takes are just spliced together such as on Drunk In My Past and the stomping opener The New World where the band get overtly political without dating themselves by naming presidents or congressmen like the Dead Kennedys always did. Go to you YouTube and type in ‘Pearl Jam New World’ to see a passionate cover version on the 2004 Vote For Change tour to catch the grunge titans with a somewhat over enthusiastic Tim Robbins singing like his life depended on each and every word.
It’s on the even more anthemic We’re having Much More Fun that you think that even though this is only track two that the group has recorded a classic LP. But by Make The Music Go Bang and Breathless the record suffers with filler. And so it goes on. With the final two songs on More Fun in The New World it becomes quite evident that the band is unfocussed. I See Red is a shot in the arm punk dash which would not seem out of place on either of X’s first two records and yet because of the crystal clean production the track is out of place and old hat. The group seem far more comfortable on the funk infused closer True Love Pt 2 where they revel and weave their way through five minutes of full on retro groove, name checking their favourite songs from rockabilly to soul. Here they seem free and wired for anything new but not even this could ready fans for what was to follow on their next record, 1985’s Ain’t Love Grand.
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lostinrock 