There is a hope that lives in young people everywhere that one day they can be part of a garage band, then refine that sound and become a rockstar.
The stipulation to this dream is that you refine your sound before you move on to bigger and better things. Sure, there was the grunge era that reintroduced the distorted, lulled vocals, but even that was refined to a point.
Pure X releases Pleasure July 5th. Opening with “Heavy Air” you’re immediately inundated with ambient noise drawn out over a lightly sung melody. With almost incomprehensible lyrics, the weight of the distortion, and melancholy you feel you’re gasping for air by the time you reach “Easy.” As this track feels even more upbeat, I can’t help but hope for something a little cleaner. Vocally every track carries an echo-chamber effect, which varies in degree throughout the compiled confusion. Combine that with lyrics that seem as though they’re being mumbled to intentionally deliver a painful message and you’ve got 10 tracks begging for a pick me up. There is one unwavering consistency; from beginning to end you lose any chance of understanding the vocals as soon as the guitar unintelligibly stumbles into another excessive slurring riff.
The title of the first album under the name Pure X is the definition of a misnomer. It is ten repetitive tracks of anything but pleasurable. If we strip this down and only consider it an “indie” production, the levels and mixing value is sure to induce a headache. The trio from Texas missed the mark with their attempt at self production. I’m not sure what level they were attempting to reach, but this album fails even get up from the floor.
Having most certainly crafted a sound that is recognizable as being Pure X, Pleasure missed the memo of refining their sound before moving out of the garage.