Purity Ring - Shrines (2012)

After I pressed my boyfriend with no results for a smart Purity Ring review, I decided I should do it myself, otherwise, there would be no review for this wonderful band, which, by the way, deserves to be more well-known. And yes, it is true that if I want it to be better-known, I should tell you what the band’s called – Purity Ring.

This right here would be the album cover, which suggests– you guessed it – a circular construct that inspires purity and safety. Yep, it’s the painted version of the band’s name. Or, on a second thought – you guessed it once again- it’s an uterus holding a child in a spiritual universe, the lack of the mother’s shapes and the random development of the child (and also the lamb’s) being considered a normal thing around there. Because fuck logic, that’s why.

Anyhow, I’m here to talk about the music, not the cover, so I’ll write a few words about each song that found its way to my ears. The first one was Lofticries and damn, it’s one of those songs you can listen to no matter what mood you're into, whether you feel like staying in bed with somebody else or you feel like dying. Nah – this song just sets you for everything that’s yet to come. You cannot have any bad feelings while listening to this song, ‘cause it just makes everything easier.

Tip: If you have to give somebody bad news, make them listen to this song before and they won’t take it as bad as they would normally do.

 Lofticries is one of those songs that are best received in a unique manner. You can’t say it means something something in particular,  and that’s what they wanted to express through the song/album and case closed. You feel it has a message, and they combine words in a very natural way– unlike many presumably deep songs that are nothing more than a few words forced into a sentence and – oooh! Let’s shove in a bunch of metaphores that are completely absurd and pretend that our music is too deep for the listeners to understand unless their IQ is going through the roof. – Music nowadays, ladies and gentlemen.

The second song I listened to was Grandloves, pretty similar to the first one, but very different aswell (you only see how different these two are after listening to a one of them 30 times in a row and the other one for another 30 times and so it shuffles in a 2-song playlist until you get bored). Ah, also, I forgot to mention how the dudette’s voice sounds – brilliant. At first it was grinding my gears, but then I couldn’t imagine how the song would have sounded without her amazing voice.

It’s another song that you can listen to no matter what mood you’re in, because it connects you to something else, another world. Call it what you will, what I know is that I’m disconnected from everything while listening to these songs.

Next song -  Obedear, which just sounds like Pedobear to me, but thank God, it’s just an unfortunate similarity. This one is completely different from the first two I talked about. Its style reminds me of Olive’s You’re not alone we all know, especially towards the end of the song.

And, finally, Crawlersout.. that’s the song that convinced me that these guys are so chill that they could describe a murder in the most accurate details and they will still make you smile. I’m not sure yet if that’s a good thing or a psychotic one. Yes, it’s nice knowing that you’re part of the universe, just energy (that should be more zen) which has a shape that’ll get lost someday, but let’s keep it this way. I want my shape to get lost when it’s time to get lost.

Aaaanyway, I’m ending my review here. Those were just demo versions of the songs. Youtube is full and it’s free (too bad it also has ads). Give them a listen and convince yourselves whether they’re a sweet band or not.

Note: It might be a big thing to say, but for me, this band, along with Pink Floyd are the only two groups that are somewhere above and cannot be compared to anything else in music -  and that’s because of the energy they offer me. So yeah, they’re a cool group.

Nicole