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.
MUSIC
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
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)
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
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.
BOOKING: pureecstastytx@gmail.com
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PRESS: tom@hivemindpr.com
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