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

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

Fire Talk is proud to present three early Tonstartssbandht albums reissued digitally & on color vinyl for the first time . “An When”, “Dick Nights” & “Hymn” are a snapshot from the earliest days of the Florida brother's vast catalog that provides a distinct starting point from which the band has journeyed. Through years of constant touring, the duo’s songs have both taken shape and changed shape, yet maintained their long, languid tendencies, full of open musical questions and temporary answers. Far from what FADER calls “psychedelia’s most intriguing upstarts,” the band’s “time-warped explosion of folksy jams designed to transport you out of this world” (Pitchfork) have become their own distinct object. Each reissue provides a photograph that perfectly encapsulates Tonstartssbandht at a single moment in their evolution. Now critically-acclaimed statesmen who staked out their own territory in the underground music of the early aughts, the reissued recordings feel both transcendent and intimate, a portal into a lineage of music that feels laden with possibility and exploratory wonder. All three albums are out July 15th on Fire Talk.

“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.

Drifter, the first album in a decade from San Francisco shoegazers Young Prisms is a record that finds steadiness in the embrace of uncertainty. Forming in 2009, with release of a self-titled EP on esteemed indie tastemaker Mexican Summer followed by two full lengths (2011’s Friends For Now and 2012’s In Between) on Kanine Records. Coming of age during a time where the band’s blend of introspective shoegaze and gauze-laden guitar earned them tours with bands like the Radio Dept, Dum Dum Girls, A Place to Bury Strangers and Moon Duo, Young Prisms never quite reached the same heights of commercial success afforded to some of their peers. At its core, Drifter is about the human experience and finding a balance between the thrills and intensity of wanting - another person, a better life - and the quiet rewards of finding peace in domesticity, whatever shape that may take. As the band explains, the central chorus of the lead single “I believe in you, honeydew” changes meaning as you realize that you can’t fix things, but you can figure out how to believe in yourself.” In many ways, Drifter feels like a homecoming - throughout the flux of growing older and not necessarily growing up in the ways you expected, the band has found their footing with the time afforded when you finally take the pressure off. It’s a record that could have only been made with real passage of time, through the world-weary vantage point of a group of friends that can’t stop coming back to each other. "Drifter gave my inner demons permission to surface and form into something less despondent. I tend to draw inspiration from my more crippling moments, but as we’ve matured I've found happiness in practicality and maybe there’s a source in that, too." Recorded from June 2020 through February 2021 and produced by Shaun Durkan (Weekend, Soft Kill), Drifter, mastered by Heba Kadry (Slowdive, Bjork, Japanese Breakfast).

1st Pressing
400 Copies on Violet Haze Vinyl
400 Copies on Black Vinyl
*Additional 400 Units on Bright Blue Indie Exclusive Vinyl Available only at Independent Record Stores