Crawling Up the Stairs

Crawling Up The Stairs has strong riptides that have no qualms over carrying you away, but if you embrace them you may be pleasurably surprised.

Crawling Up The Stairs should be praised not only for its beauty, honesty and sonic specialty, but also for the way it’s sequenced.

It’s bleak and bittersweet, and it’s very well done.

These instruments layer in complex, hypnotic patterns that drone in and over themselves, forged together to create less an emotional outcry than the hazy anguish of recalled emotion.

It may not be as instantly gratifying as Pleasure, but it's more sophisticated and self-aware.

While it's interesting to hear Grace pour his heart out on 'All Of The Future (All Of The Past)' in a pained fashion, it makes for a record that doesn't really demand repeated listens.

It’s an album of stitched-together aspects that feel incongruous, though interesting.

Dark elements permeate the menacing corners of Crawling Up The Stairs, and while it may have been a long, grueling journey to get through, it seems that by the end of this bumpy road, Pure X have reached a positive creative terrain that suggests their long climb up the from the bottom was worth all the effort and pain it took to get there.

With Crawling Up the Stairs, the masks are off for the world to hear.

Whilst often brilliant, Crawling makes you wonder why Pure X have swapped pleasure for pain.

It’s possibly not to everyone’s taste--no doubt fans of the definiteness of ‘Pleasure’ may turn on this one--but it’s more confident and upfront, less immersed in background noise.

Pure X may not be particularly pure anymore, but it’s a pleasure to have them down in the muck with the rest of us.

While a totally pleasant album not too far removed from the dense sound they've been working in, the dour sentiments are barely hidden below the softly spacy atmospherics, and when they do pop out, the combination of ugly hard times and pretty music can be unsettling.

Crawling Up The Stairs is a very fine follow up that sees them once again exploring the inner workings of their souls and collective psyche with often beautiful results.