PURE X

BIO

Pure X has always been out of time, eternal—their airy, cavernous sound like sunlight through the waves. Formed in 2009 as a three-piece of Nate Grace, Jesse Jenkins V, and Austin Youngblood called Pure Ecstasy, their early singles, which hit the mainline of shoegaze, soul, doo-wop, and loner Americana, garnered immediate acclaim. Legal issues forced a name change to Pure X, whose bluntness and economy was perhaps more reflective of the band’s ability to cast a spell in under 3 minutes.

Their first album, 2011’s Pleasure, which collected the early singles with new songs was an instant classic debut. As assured in its ambience as Television’s Marquee Moon, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, or The Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin, Pleasure is the sound of being on a balcony just before dawn, driving through a tunnel that is blissfully longer than you expected.

On their sophomore effort from 2013, Crawling Up The Stairs (mixed and mastered by country legend Larry Seyer), Pure X took a hard left into the abyss. Icier and more surreal than Pleasure, it leaned into the anguish, dancing on the narrative beat of a band like angels on the heads of serpents. During this time Pure X added Matty Tommy Davidson as a full time member and established themselves as a killer live band, leading unwitting crowds to their flickering palace in the distance.

After extensive touring throughout 2013-2014, Pure X recorded Angel in an abandoned Czech dance hall in central Texas. Lovesick and deeply narcotic, Angel completed a trilogy of hedonism, suffering, and devotion for ascension. After this, what was left to do, except go on hiatus, or perhaps break up, or just let things unfurl to a chugging rhythm section running down the horizon line of sunset.

During the break, the band mates developed the movies of their own lives—scattering for a fresh start, having children, traveling, making other music. Jesse released the gorgeous, windswept solo album, Hard Sky in 2017 that explored the liminal, ever-present state between giving up and keeping on.

And so in 2018, Pure X quietly “reformed”. It was time for the legacy album, the still standing album, the slick backed, silver bracelet, black and white gravitas on the rocks album. After two years of writing, then recording live as a band, their fourth, self-titled album sounds expensive and wise. These are not songs of resignation, but of unsentimental empathy, of understanding one’s surroundings and when it’s time to move on. Pure X has always known how it’s going to end, but has always had the class not to ruin a great party because of that inconvenient detail.