Sometimes, writing this blog allows me to consider alternative histories that I could have lived through, at least in terms of what my musical passions could have ended up being. All of the qualities that caused me to fall in love with Marion - surging guitars, vocals that mixed soul with passion - are to be found here in Offshore by Puressence. Had I been fully clued into contemporary British music, two years earlier than I chose to start buying the records, listening to the shows and reading the magazines and papers, I can well believe that I’d have fallen under Puressence’s spell under the belief that they had something which set them apart from the rest, just as I did with Marion in 1995/96. It opens up the distressing possibility that I’d have dismissed Marion as copyists, imagine! A world without This World and Body - ugh! - I have to take a lie down to dismiss the possibility. No, history takes care of itself for the right reasons, and I am grateful that, in this instance at least, it played out as it did. Apparently, the two groups toured together at one point. I wonder how many of the audience had to be carried out due to being overcome by emotion at those gigs.
My abiding memory of Puressence in the 90s is the way that the music press kept suggesting that achieving major success was only a question of time for them. Be patient, lads, stardom is coming - albeit in the manner of a bus service which ran once a day, every sixth Sunday. At least Puressence’s fans never had to wait too long for new material from them. Offshore was their third EP release inside a year on 2 Damn Loud, and their last before they signed to Island Records.
