One of the things that set X apart from the rest of the Los Angeles punk scene was its effortless and almost unspoken integration of country music into its revved-up rockabilly punk sound. Its presence was mostly in the vocals: it was most audible in John Doe's rich, resonant baritone voice, which even from the earliest days he was unwilling to fully hide behind a whiny or screamy facade, and in the astringent modal harmonies he sang with his then-wife Exene Cervenka. (Exene's own singing was widely criticized, and not without reason -- but together they made a weird and unsettling sort of magic.) As time went on and X fell slowly apart, its country influences became more and more pronounced, and in Doe's subsequent solo work he has largely abandoned the splenetic punk roar of his youth in favor of a roots-rock approach that is much more suitable to his natural instrument. His rendition of John Hiatt's "The Real One" on Meet John Doe was definitive, and his own "A Matter of Degrees" on the same album is one of the strongest and most affecting songs he's written. He also nodded towards his backward-looking future on that album with a wry but heartfelt rendition of Hank Cochran's classic honky tonk weeper "It's Only Love" (next phrase: "it'll go away").
On his latest album, Country Club, he teams up with Canadian roots band the Sadies. Here he abandons all urban pretense and wholeheartedly embraces the countrified musical past that has clearly been close to his heart for decades. This album includes such tired material as "A Fool Such As I," "Take These Chains from My Heart," and even (I kid you not) "Help Me Make It Through the Night." And while it would be an exaggeration to say that Doe and the Sadies make these songs their own, it's no exaggeration to say that they make them sound new and fresh. And that Doe's voice is still a national treasure.
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