I came across Puressence working on the student newspaper Degrees North. (Can you see what they did there?) It was the band’s debut single, Fire, and it just blew me away. I instantly fell in love with it. It’s Cure sounding bass, the huge wall of guitars mixed with the singer’s high, sweet voice, it just grabbed me. Somehow, it sounds huge and fragile at the same time. What I didn’t realise at the time is that this was (yet) another shoegazing act, but instead of being influenced by the usual English bands, this was shoegazing via Chicago.
I was hooked and kept my eye on the incoming records and bugging the Island Music rep to send me the album. Eventually he did and received a tape with no cover art, just a track listing. I dived in, wrote a glowing review and handed it in with pride. Then after reading an interview with the band, I had to sprint to the office to change my review. I thought the singer was a woman.Turns out he was a Manc lad called James…
Ah well, mistakes, we’ve all made them.
The album opens gently with Near Distance, the band barely audible as they slowly build under the singer’s voice. That build lasts before most of the song before they let loose, not with a wall of noise, that’s kept for later, but they set out what the band do perfectly in the opening song.
Puressence pinwheels between down beat introspection and an examination of life in 90’s Manchester. Mr. Brown is a reference to The Stranglers, Golden Brown, and is one of the only first person songs I know about people stealing to buy drugs.
However the album is far more focused on introspection rather than social commentary and while it is very sad boy indie in places, the power of the music is more than enough to offset any misty eyed ennui.
You’re Only Trying to Twist my Arm is one of my favourite songs. The guitar just snarls over the bass before the walls of sound crash in, all while James’ voice sits perfectly in the mix through all the fireworks. But it’s the album closer, India, a 6 minute epic that shows the true power of the band. A triumphant capstone, slathered in walls of noise, that plays the album out and a defiant declaration that this band had arrived.
But back in 1996 this sound was about as unfashionable as could be. No one was looking for shoegazing by way of grunge, let alone that reconfigured through Manchester aesthetics. Britpop was king of the public imagination, and this was as far from The Good Mixer scene as it was possible to get.
Puressence is yet another album on this list that should have been huge but for whatever reason, it sank without trace. Left to the few who remember it and forgotten by the world. But fuck it. I still have my copy and it still sounds amazing when I take it back out for a listen. It sounds as good today as it ever did.
The ways of exile 