It was a "change of styles" so to speak, as the follow up to "Along the Red Ledge". David Foster is behind the board again for this excellent CD. It contains the one "hit", Wait for Me, but the rest of the CD was largely ignored. It's sad, becuase when this came out in late 1979, radio stations were force feeding me songs like Escape (The Pina Colada Song) and Funkytown! We all could have been listening to X-Static! I was younger and didn't know better. Thankfully, I went to my local Record Bar and bought the 8-track. Later in life, I was fortunate enough to get the CD. If your a H&O fan, so should you.

High spots include "Woman Comes and Goes" and the John Oates' penned "Portable Radio". For the next CD, radio was not able to hold them back any longer, but people who had "X-Static" at that time already knew that these guys had a great sound!

Buddah presents 2 excellent bonus cuts and some nice liner notes. This CD should have been more of a success, but "Who Said the World was Fair?".

Highly Underated one of their best.
This Album holds it's own with the best music Hall & Oates has ever done. You should never expect artists to do the same thing over and over again and this album is way diffrent from the others. This album for me ranks as Hall & Oates big album like "Rumours" to Fleetwood Mac or Supertramps "Breakfast in America". Just because a record company doesn't promote an album doesn't mean it's not worthy of that title. I could play this album over agian and again a must have for die hard fans

I need Intravino
One of my favorite Hall and Oates albums and one of their most underappreciated. Most people will recognize Wait for Me, but won't be familiar with the rest of the album. Some of the gems included the "should have been" second single, Portable Radio. The great concert rocker Bebop/Drop and one of the coolest Hall and Oates songs they recorded, Hallofon-Intravino. The CD also includes the tough to find No Brain, No Pain and an unreleased track which almost sounds like a "sequel" to Wait for Me. Buddah did a great job on the CD and the packaging also includes some great liner notes where Daryl and John talk about the songs. Hopefully Buddha will bring out some of the other out of print CD's (Livetime, Beauty on a Back Street, Bigger Than Both of Us) with bonus tracks. Visit them at [another website] and drop them a note telling them you want more Hall and Oates.

Unpredictable
I bought this cd to add to my H&O collection. If you're familiar with all of their 80s pop hits, this will be a bit of a shocker but will definitely grow on you.

As most of the reviews have mentioned, you can break this album down into 3 categories:

Pop/Rock - You'll notice that D&J are both doing vocals on these songs which is what makes them sound so different from their 80s hits. Also, some of these songs border on punk because of Robert Fripp's influence from the Sacred Songs albums. There are times when you'll question who's singing (as the liner notes point out, "No Brain, No Pain" could easily be mistaken for a Talking Heads song)!

1. Woman Comes And Goes
4. All You Want Is Heaven
8. Bebop/Drop
9. Hallofon (instrumental intro) / 10. Intravino
12. No Brain, No Pain

Disco - The intros of these songs are almost interchangeable and sound very much like the dance music Dan Hartman was doing in the early 80s

3. Portable Radio
5. Who Said The World Was Fair
6. Running From Paradise

Soul - This portion of the album is standard H&O fare

2. Wait For Me
11. Time's Up (Alone Tonight)

The one stand-out for me was 7. Number One. There's such a strong reggae influence that before the vocals start, you could swear this was a Police tune!

So while, this albums wasn't exactly polished lyrically or musically, it does serve as a very good time capsule of the late 70s punk/disco/new wave sound which would later become the blueprint for so much 80s music.

Nothing really to be X-Static about.
With X-STATIC, their 1979 album, Hall and Oates got caught in the middle of a raging battle between disco and rock. They started incorporating ceratin elements of disco into their sound; however, contrary to popular belief, X-STATIC is not a disco album. It's a combination of disco and their signature rock 'n soul music. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's kind of like a mixed bag.

But X-STATIC does have its moments. The first several songs, "The Woman Comes and Goes," "Wait For Me," "Portable Radio," "All You Want Is Heaven," and "Who Said the World Is Fair," are all standouts, proving that Daryl and John can write some great songs.

But from the sixth track "Running From Paradise," its title says it all. A silly, unfocused dud, it is the worst song on the album, and, things start to fall apart from then on. It's a dry spell that even Oates's tough rocker "Bebop/Drop," and the silly but melodic charm of "Intravino" can't save. The two bonus tracks on the Buddha Records reissue of the album I have not heard; instead I have an earlier Japanese import CD.

The problem with X-STATIC lies within the overall quality of the record. The production sounds a bit on the unfocused side, and not surprisingly, it was the last Hall and Oates album to have any connection with an outside executive producer. With VOICES, however, Hall and Oates produced themselves, to a better sound, but it wasn't until PRIVATE EYES that the magic came alive.