Better Than Life

Listening to Better Than Life, the final album by MX-80 Sound, is particularly bittersweet given the passing of their guitarist, Bruce Anderson, in 2022. Plenty of great guitarists emerged from the underground in the seventies – particularly that weird space that was pre-punk, prog-adjacent, articulate but not smarmy about it – but Bruce Anderson had the leap on just about all of them. His playing, its tangled, sinuous lines cut by the heavy sluice of thick chords – got better with time, too, something you can hear on Better Than Life, which is performed by a meta-MX-80: Anderson joined the group up with his rock trio Rattletrap. Two drummers, then, like The Fall at their peak. MX-80 share an attitudinal disdain with The Fall, actually, but that’s about where the comparisons end; the surprising thing about MX-80 Sound, and it’s as true of this album as it was of ‘80s classics like Out Of The Tunnel, is the way they pull together surprising threads – the unrelenting grunt of Detroit rock; the thorniness of Crimson/VDGG prog; the unpredictability of great free jazz; sometimes, the heft of metal. By any measure, Better Than Life was a remarkable way to sign off.