X – the quintessential West Coast punk band – made two sensational albums in the early '80s for which they won an avalanche of critical acclaim and a small but solid core of fans in California. But record sales sucked – the band barely cracked the margins of success – and so during the next few years the original quartet made a few baby steps toward commercial appeal. This period of the band's evolution is captured on these Rhino reissues (the band's first three albums were released last year). On 1983's More Fun in the New World the furious tempos of the early recordings are tempered by a variety of styles and feels, including the title cut, on which they play a nifty little shuffle and guitarist Billy Zoom adds a decorative melody from "Happy Trails to You." They throw in some Western swing on the Brit-o-phobic protest number "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," nod to the dance floor with "True Love Part II," and deliver a revved-up cover of Jerry Lee Lewis's "Breathless" – used in the Hollywood remake of the Goddard film of the same name. The album is strong, all things considered, a well-realized expansion of the band's musical horizons that doesn't come at the expense of their integrity.

Naturally More Fun didn't sell either, which opened the flood gates to serious trouble. Ain't Love Grand (1985) recasts the band as an L.A. hair-metal ensemble, and See How We Are (1987) turns John and Exene into a kind of roots-rocking John and Jane Cougar Mellencamp. Grand drowns in digital reverb and rotten songs, and on this expanded reissue only a pair of great tunes not found on the original – the Small Faces' "All or Nothing" and the Replacements' "I Will Dare" (bass and drum machine only!) – make it a decent purchase. See How We Are is vastly better, lifted by Dave Alvin's classic "4th of July" (he was a member of the band for a short while) and by the title track, which delivers clear-eyed social commentary from a grown-up John and Exene. By then Zoom and the links to X's punk roots were gone, and the band – and the '80s – were about finished.