Is Wild Gift X's best album?

Cervenka’s first solo LP is amazingly underrated, but Doe’s work outside of the group is just so consistently solid

Do you mean "Old Wives Tales"?

I love John's solo best-of, it shows that consistency you mentioned.

A lot of folks from that era have strong but somewhat overlooked solo catalogs. John Doe, Dave Alvin, Chuck Prophet, Peter Case ...

Yes, Old Wives Tales. Her later work outside of X is really solid, too. It’s only Zoom who’s never really recorded much of note outside of the band, but I think he still operates a very high-end custom guitar company?

I like this album better than Los Angeles, but it feels like the quality control drops suddenly at the finish. Ending your album with three progressively weaker up-tempo throwaways is maybe a way of proving your punk bonafides, but it doesn't result in a great record 40 years later.

I'm a huge fan of Back 2 The Base, but otherwise yeah.