Pure

Feverish (Mammoth)
by Jamie Kiffel

Ironically, Pure‘s strongest point is its creative use of distortion. Windy guitars curl up suddenly like sensitive ferns; the birds chirping maniacally outside your window prove to actually be coming from your left speaker, and synthesized gurgles bubble up from the otherwise flat and nebulous surface of “Pay Your Way.” “March of the Loonies” features what could be a high school marching band’s performance after being trained on Twinkies and several hundred viewings of Welcome Back, Kotter. “Sunshine and Happy Hour” reeks of Spring breaks spent picking at sunburns while chasing beers (themselves in hot pursuit of $1 tequila shots) with carrots, celery, and bleu cheese dressing.

Unfortunately, vocalist Jordy Birch’s voice is not nearly as aerobic as the instruments he splays his lazy sound across. As Pure’s lyrics do not strain toward philosophical esoterica much beyond flatly wailing, “doin’ my thing in Palm Springs,” some wildly inventive vocal genius is needed to keep them from merely painting a broad, dimly gray layer of early-’90s Seattle sludge over music that sounds as if it’s fighting to work its way out of being vocally pressed to death. It might be worthwhile to strain out the grinds of what musical inventiveness is here, to leave the grimy film of vocals behind, and to then determine just how musically “pure” is Pure.