Wild Gift
Studio album by
X
ReleasedMay 1981
RecordedMarch 1981
StudioClover Recorders, Los Angeles, Golden Sound Studios, Hollywood
Genre
Length33:02
LabelSlash
ProducerRay Manzarek
X chronology
Los Angeles
(1980)		 Wild Gift
(1981)		 Under the Big Black Sun
(1982)

Wild Gift is the second studio album by American rock band X, released on May 4, 1981, by Slash Records. It was very well received critically, and was voted the year's second best album in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll. Wild Gift was later ranked at number 334 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Wild Gift showcases the band's unique punk rock style, which infuses roots rock, country, blues, R&B, and rockabilly.

In 1988, Slash issued Los Angeles and Wild Gift jointly on a single compact disc. Wild Gift was remastered and reissued in 2001 by Rhino Records, with seven bonus tracks.

The track "White Girl" was sampled by the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their 1989 album Mother's Milk, in the song "Good Time Boys".[1] The Chili Peppers song's lyrics mentioned X's John Doe specifically, "whose voice is made of gold".

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Christgau's Record GuideA+[2]
Entertainment WeeklyA[3]
Record Mirror[4]
Rolling Stone[5]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[6]
Spin Alternative Record Guide10/10[7]

Trouser Press wrote that "Zoom's ingeniously simple guitar transcends its influences, and the Doe/Exene harmonies attain a knifelike sharpness."[8] In The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1981, Wild Gift was ranked at number two, behind Sandinista! by the Clash.[9]

In Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), critic Robert Christgau lauded Wild Gift, writing:

Hippies couldn't understand jealousy because they believed in universal love; punks can't understand it because they believe sex is a doomed reflex of existentially discrete monads. As X-Catholics obsessed with a guilt they can't accept and committed to a subculture that gives them no peace, Exene and John Doe are prey to both misconceptions, and their struggle with them is thrilling and edifying ... Who knows whether the insightful ministrations of their guitarist will prove as therapeutic for them as for you and me, but I say trust a bohemian bearing gifts. How often do we get a great love album and a great punk album in the same package?[2]

Christgau later ranked Wild Gift third on his "Personal Best" list for the 1980s, the highest placing of any rock album.[10] Wild Gift was ranked at number 334 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".[11][12]

Track listing

All tracks written by John Doe and Exene Cervenka.

Side one

  1. "The Once Over Twice" – 2:31
  2. "We're Desperate" – 2:00
  3. "Adult Books" – 3:19
  4. "Universal Corner" – 4:33
  5. "I'm Coming Over" – 1:14
  6. "It's Who You Know" – 2:17

Side two

  1. "In This House That I Call Home" – 3:34
  2. "Some Other Time" – 2:17
  3. "White Girl" – 3:27
  4. "Beyond and Back" – 2:49
  5. "Back 2 the Base" – 1:33
  6. "When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch" – 1:57
  7. "Year 1" – 1:18

Bonus tracks (2001 reissue)

  1. "Beyond and Back" (Live) – 2:48
  2. "Blue Spark" (Demo) – 2:04
  3. "We're Desperate" (Single version) – 2:01
  4. "Back 2 the Base" (Live) – 1:40
  5. "Heater" (Rehearsal) (Doe) – 2:32
  6. "White Girl" (Single Mix) – 3:29
  7. "The Once Over Twice" (Unissued Single Mix) – 2:35

Bonus tracks (2019 Remaster) (Digital Release)

  1. "Beyond and Back" (Live) – 2:48
  2. "We're Desperate" [Explicit] (Live) – 2:31
  3. "Year 1" (Live) – 1:26

Personnel

X

Charts

Sales chart performance for Wild Gift
Chart Position Date Duration
Billboard 200[13] 165 June 28, 1981 5 weeks

References

  1. 1 2 Prato, Greg. "Wild Gift – X". AllMusic. Retrieved September 11, 2005.
  2. 1 2 Christgau, Robert (1990). "X: Wild Gift". Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-73015-X. Retrieved February 26, 2006.
  3. ↑ Weingarten, Marc (September 28, 2001). "X: Los Angeles / Wild Gift / Under the Big Black Sun". Entertainment Weekly. p. 75.
  4. ↑ Cooper, Mark (August 22, 1981). "X: Wild Gift". Record Mirror. p. 18.
  5. ↑ Cohen, Debra Rae (August 20, 1981). "X: Wild Gift". Rolling Stone. No. 350. Archived from the original on May 7, 2008. Retrieved April 4, 2006.
  6. ↑ Sisario, Ben (2004). "X". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 889–90. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  7. ↑ Sheffield, Rob (1995). "X". In Weisbard, Eric; Marks, Craig (eds.). Spin Alternative Record Guide. Vintage Books. pp. 438–39. ISBN 0-679-75574-8.
  8. ↑ "X". Trouser Press. Retrieved 3 October 2023.
  9. ↑ "The 1981 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. February 1, 1982. Retrieved October 23, 2005.
  10. ↑ Christgau, Robert (January 2, 1990). "Decade Personal Best: '80s". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
  11. ↑ Levy, Joe, ed. (2006) [2005]. "Wild Gift – X". Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (3rd ed.). London: Turnaround. ISBN 1-932958-61-4. OCLC 70672814. Archived from the original on December 20, 2010. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  12. ↑ "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. May 31, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2019.
  13. ↑ "X". Billboard. Retrieved April 30, 2020.
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