Voices b|w Alexandria

VINYL FORMAT. Pure Ecstasy is the latest incarnation of a long-standing collaboration between Austin, Texas musicians and long-term friends Nate Grace, Jesse Jenkins and Austin Youngblood. Acéphale is very proud to resent their latest single, limited to 500 copies on maroon/black blended vinyl with a matte finish sleeve, and no repress!

Patient, sparse and never any less than heartbreaking, the clutch of songs making up Pure Ecstasy's material to date has a sonic originality that many artists spend entire careers trying to cultivate. That's not to be mistaken - Pure Ecstasy are a rock 'n' roll band in the tradition's truest sense. There are clear influences here, for sure: the snarl and nonchalant bombast of the Jesus and Mary Chain the wistful, lonesome croon of Hank Williams and the pure, lovesick melodies of 1960s soul music can all be easily perceived within the group's work to date. Crucially, however, Pure Ecstasy do not let their reverence for such precedents overwhelm them. So where other lo-fi fetishists currently garnering attention tend to produce a facsimile of their inspirations, Grace, Jenkins and Youngblood dissect, invert and change them. The A-Side, "Voices," rolls with impossibly crunching guitars and yet seems to float effortlessly. Grace's wrenching vocals encourage hope with a startling directness, yet frequently veer into heartbreaking pleas. B-Side "Alexandria" is more meditative and hypnotic, a distorted groove wraps its way around washes of feedback and reverb with Grace emerging from the mix to pour himself out.