Pure X Announce Self Titled 4th LP, Pleasure & Crawling Up The Stairs Re-Issues
Fire Talk is proud to announce the signing of Austin Texas underground legends Pure X. It's been 6 years since Pure X released their 2014 album Angel, the last in a run of three critically-acclaimed LPs from the band's beginning in 2009. During the break, the band mates developed the movies of their own lives—scattering for a fresh start, having children, traveling, making other music. 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.
Listen to two tracks "Middle America" and "Fantasy," a preview of a new record self-titled album due out on Fire Talk on May 1st digitally & July 3rd physically.
In addition to the new album Fire Talk will re-issue Pure X’s first two albums ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Crawling Up The Stairs’ available for the first time on 180 Gram Heavy Weight Vinyl.
Watch Videos for the tracks here and add to your collection on your streaming service of choice HERE.
Stream “Middle America” & “Fantasy”
Pre Order
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)
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