Purity Ring - Another Eternity (leak and weak)

To quote the Grateful Dead- 'maybe they had too much too fast'.   The production and singing duo of Corin Roddick and Megan James don't seem like the drug reference particularly applies though.  In person they come across more like studious art music nerds with no time for messing about.  Puritanical musical work ethic and all that, pardon the pun.

They may have had too much exposure though.  It seems like a maelstrom of hype since 4AD announced and ultimately released the perfect Shrines on July 24, 2012.  Having toured extensively on their own and with indie titans Grizzly Bear they got a lot of stage time in early in their career.  Conversely, although both hail from Edmonton, their recording was done largely at a distance with Roddick perfecting a beat and then emailing it to James who would add her vocals at a distance.  Its a frequently common form of collaboration, particularly in hip-hop, but in their case they hit kismet sonic gold on every single track.  Live and on record their were not so much singles and low points as different facets of Shrines.  They were just that good.

This is all before Danny Brown somehow got a hold of them.  The combination of Molly and their melifluous beats and mesmerizing live show undoubtedly had something to do with it.  They remade their brilliant Belispeak as Belispeak II.  Later they were asked to produce a beat and be featured on 25 Bucks one of the few strong tracks on Brown's middling album Old.  They seem to have fleshed out a bit of a niche in Hip Hop as they didn't seem to do much in 2014, besides working on Another Eternity, other than produce a beat for Ab-Soul God's Reign for his album These Days...

Not that you'd really hear a strong Hip Hop influence on the album.  In fact whatever Roddick is doing is further back in the mix then one would have anticipated.  Gone are the almost choral effects he charmingly concocted by his custom percussion array resembling a futuristic steel pan set up.  In its place are a mewly melange of current EDM tropes that just sort of drift by without drawing any attention to themselves.  At points it sounds like some ill intended collaboration with a big room EDM DJ like Avicii.  Other moments you almost expect Pitbull to come out for a guest verse.  What is Megan James doing through all this.  Well she's singing a lot that's pretty hard to avoid.  But instead of the treated clipped and more obscure vocal delivery that was a hallmark of Purity Ring's sound she's just doing what quite a lot of women are doing in the very broad field of Electronic Dance Music these days- and not particuarly well.  Kingston (of Blue Sky Black Death)  now going by Ultra88 has accomplished something much more pleasing to the ear incorporating electronics and the female voice on his new release Sirens. James lyrics presumably have meaning and yield to introspection but its unclear because the album - and this is painful to admit because I had the highest of hopes for this group and delighted seeing them up close at NXNE the year of their ignition  - is another eternity to make it through to the end.

What happened?  Undoubtedly this is the album they wanted to make even if they have softened all the quirky edges that endeared their sound.  The overall sense one gets is artists that had too long, too much resources, too much input trying to create an album with crossover appeal.  It may have been that they worked best with little resources, and that working at a distance may have been unique to their creative process.

Another Eternity:

01 heartsigh

02 bodyache

03 push pull

04 repetition

05 stranger than earth

06 begin again

07 dust hymn

08 flood on the floor

09 sea castle

10 stillness in woe