Fire Talk 2020 in New Records and Reissues
We’re looking back at our 2020 and although it was exceptionally wild we managed to release an amazing spread of new records and reissues. Highlights below and stream them all in our New Singles Playlist!
“I want nothing more than to be a loner,” Emily Kempf sings early on Flower of Devotion, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. It’s a startling admission coming from a songwriter who, just a year ago on Dehd’s critically acclaimed Water, wrote eloquently about the joys and pains — more than anything, the necessity — of love, compassion, and companionship. But then, “admission” isn’t really the right word here, given the stridency of Kempf’s tone. “Loner” is a declaration.
The record ups the ante on Dehd’s sound & filters in just enough polish to bring out the shining and melancholy undertones in Jason Balla and Emily Kempf’s songwriting, even as it captures them at their most strident. Balla’s guitar lines at times flirt with ticklish cosmic country, while at others they reflect the dark marble sounds of Broadcast. Kempf, meanwhile, establishes herself as a singer of incredible expressive range, pinching into a high lonesome wail, letting loose a chirping “ooh!,” pushing her voice below its breaking point and letting it swing down there. When she and Balla bounce descending counter-melodies off one another over McGrady’s one-two thumps, or skitter off over a programmed drum pad, they sound like The B-52s shaking off heartache.
What makes Flower of Devotion so impressive is how its creation seems to have strengthened its creators, both as individuals and as a unit, even as they’ve stared down their own limitations. It’s also striking just how much fun they seem to be having in the process. “It’s okay to be lighthearted in the face of despair,” Kempf says. It’s a theme that runs through the album, from the opening back-and-forth build of “Desire” to the click-clacking chorus of “Haha,” which finds them deflating their own history. Flower of Devotion was recorded in April and August of 2019 in Chicago. It will be released on Fire Talk Records on July 17th 2020.
2nd Pressing
Glow in the Dark Vinyl - 300 Copies
Black in Bright Green Vinyl - 500 Copies
Black Vinyl - 500 Copies
1st Pressing
Neon Green Splatter Vinyl - 500 Copies
Black Vinyl - 500 Copies
* Additional color variants available via fine independent retailers everywhere.
What do you do when pain blots out joy? How do you learn to take care of yourself? What happens when the things you think are helping end up doing the most harm? 'Auto-Pain' is the Sophomore album from Deeper, a record that finds the band embracing open space, using synths to create shadows where bricks of guitars once would’ve blocked out the sun. The group — singer and guitarist Nic Gohl, bassist Drew McBride, and drummer Shiraz Bhatti — were all graduates of Chicago’s rich DIY scene who came together around their love of Wire, Devo, Gang of Four, and Television. While the new record is still within the Great Lakes post-punk tradition of their debut, the album isn’t as insular as its predecessor; it’s less interested in pile-driving and more willing to dwell in liminal spaces. Guitars enter the picture precisely, locked bass grooves propel things forward. Drummer Shiraz Bhatti, who is half-Pakistani and half-Native American, embraced the drumming patterns he’d heard growing up at pow-wows, channeling the anxieties of his heritage into his playing and keeping the group grounded when they switch into all-out percussive attack. The result is an album both more nuanced and catchy.
Auto-Pain represents the constant wave of depression felt by many in everyday life. Stemmed from Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, Auto-Pain is a concept meant to be an inverse to soma, a pill in the book which makes everything numb. The idea of auto-pain is to epitomize the desire to return to a connection with thoughts and clarity, which comes at the expense of feeling everything simultaneously. The album artwork features the now-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago capturing the band’s rounded-off brutalism, and the album title appears in Urdu, a nod to drummer Shiraz Bhatti’s Pakistani heritage. The record was recorded and mixed by Chicago scene luminary Dave Vetraino (Lala Lala, Dehd) and mastered at Chicago Mastering by Greg Obis (Ne-Hi, Melkbelly).
A portion of the proceeds from Auto-Pain will be donated to Hope For The Day an organization that actively works to break the silence surrounding mental health.
Pure X is the last band, has always been the last band. Not that there won’t be future acts, more that Pure X understands that all this pageantry, this civilization is wrapping up. It burned hot and bright like thermite used to bust a safe open, but now is the age of radiating waves, each one buckles the foundation more than the last.
It would be understandable to express such forbidden fatalism in a brittle, harsh nihilism, the stark echo of a stone rattling down an endless well. But on this album, their fourth and first in six years, there is a pre-dawn kindness. It may be funereal, but it is a Viking pyre ablaze in the middle of a river, one of those moments when the water seems to pause and reflect the clouds blooming like smoke from an invisible glass pipe.
Recorded live in the bucolic Texas Hill Country, this is their clearest, most focused work. The rhythm section is locked in--a night train through the desert. There is more singing, the weary wisdom of the lyrics ringing like Tibetan bowls. In 38 minutes, Pure X weave a culmination, all the delays and distortion, the grinding mortar of touring, the low-tide pulling them out from a cult band, to a legacy band, it’s here, understood and forgiven.
This album is a guide, it will comfort you through this long bruised twilight. It’s time to leave the fantasy, to play the game.
1st Pressing:
300 Copies: Clear & Blue Splatter
400 Copies: Black
300 Copies: Indie Exclusive Sky Blue (Available at your favorite Indie Record Store)
Rare Ecstasy 2009-2019 is a collection of unreleased b-sides, demos, and covers that span the more than a decade career of the Texas underground legends. Rare Ecstasy includes early tracks that reflect what Pitchfork once called the “druggy, wall-of-sound escapism that put them on the map,” as well as unreleased recordings from each album session that document the evolution of the Pure X sound. A must- have addition to the collection of any Pure X fan.
The packaging includes a mixed matte & spot gloss gatefold jacket with silver foil stamping and your choice of transparent sea glass or black vinyl.
1st Pressing
Transparent Sea Glass - 400 Units
Black - 300 Units
Clear (Indie Retail Exclusive) - 300 Units
Pleasure is the debut album from Austin underground luminaries Pure X, re-issued on 180 gram vinyl by Fire Talk. Building from promising 7” releases, ‘Pleasure’ continues the band’s affinity for burnt out soundscapes and intricate, understated guitar work that together weaves a moody tapestry of everlasting sunset. Spotlighted by major press, Pitchfork in particular commended the album as a “terrific-sounding record, built for headphones and high volume.” A revelatory introduction to the band, ‘Pleasure’ pinpoints a signature sound that Pure X would continue to hone over the course of a longstanding career - a pristinely devastating soundtrack that feels pertinent to the end times of the current state of the world.
Pressed on 180 Gram Black Vinyl.
Crawling Up The Stairs is the sophomore album from Austin underground luminaries Pure X, re-issued on 180 gram vinyl by Fire Talk. The anticipated follow-up to debut ‘Pleasure,’ the new record places Nate Grace’s ragged vocals upfront in the mix with more clearcut, refined production choices, while still imbued with the jagged sexual tension and undercurrent of catastrophe that has won them fans across the world. More accolades from the press followed, notably Pitchfork calling the record “sophisticated and self aware,” lending a further upward trajectory to the band’s steadfast cult status. The duality of vocals from Grace and Jenkins for the first time evoke an even more enthralling immediacy to Pure X's continued evolution of their nightmarish visions, a spellbinding combination that will find appeal in old fans and new listeners alike.
Pressed on 180 Gram Vinyl