When we first asked our current BOTW, Texan shoegaze trio Pure X, to put together a compilation of the tracks that had inspired their twisting and riving second album, Crawling Up the Stairs, we never could have expected what we’d get in return. The playlist they provided us is steeped in the traditions of antecedental US funk, soul and doo-wop.
Dig a little deeper into what the three-piece – comprised of Nate Grace, Jesse Jenkins and Austin Youngblood – have patched together here, though, and it soon becomes clear how the lineage of The Isley Brothers, Funkadelic and Zapp have fed into the band’s make-up. While stylistically the similarities may be quite hard to grasp, the confessional – and at times downtrodden – nature of the music speaks for itself: take, for instance, the aforementioned Isley Brothers’ ‘Hello, It’s Me‘, a track that puts across the heartbreak of losing a lover with a combination of melancholy and sensuality. It’s this balance between lust and loathing that marks much of Crawling Up the Stairs, particularly the visceral ‘Someone Else‘, or the billowing plumes of breathe that form ‘How Did You Find Me’.
That’s not to say that the only similarities are thematic ones – not by a long shot. The cumbersome lothario basslines of ‘I Fear What I Feel’ finds it’s progenitor in the buoyant rhythms of Superior Elevation’s ‘Don’t Let Go Babe’; while the glistening, choppy chord progressions of ‘Thousand Year Old Child‘ feel vindicated by the artfully intersecting melodies of Tony Troutman’s ‘I Truly Love You‘. What strikes home most of all on listening to Pure X’s soulful mix is how the Austin threesome have mutated these ancestral influences: in the process, they’ve cultivated something that stings like a million soul classics, but palpates in a very 21st century way.
- Alex Cull
Pure X’s ‘Crawling Up the Stairs’ is available now on Merok. You can order it here.
