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Jun 24, 2015 Issue #53 - April/May 2015 - Tame Impala By John Everhart

Eminently hyped on the basis of their single “Ungirthed” back in 2011, Canada’s Purity Ring proved that they weren’t a one-trick pony after they were scooped up by 4AD and released their 2012 debut LP Shrines. Pop music akin to swimming underwater with your eyes open, the band, composed of singer Meghan James and multi-instrumentalist Corin Roddick, pick up where they left off with their auspicious debut on Another Eternity. It isn’t a quantum leap forward, but hones their pop songcraft nicely, a superb bookend to what they started with Shrines.

Roddick is acutely aware that their debut was essentially a trial by fire and is able to pick holes through it, although he’s nonetheless proud of the finished product. “[Shrines] was my first attempt at producing and I think that’s why a lot of it sounds interesting. With the new album I’m better as a producer, better with allowing the vocal to be the focus at certain parts. This is something I thought about a lot. That was a big difference. Working together for that long it allowed for a chemistry that wasn’t there on our debut.”

While reaction to Another Eternity hasn’t scaled to the fever pitch of their early singles and debut album, given time Roddick thinks the listener will come to realize just how far he and James have come in both their chemistry and their songwriting capabilities. They certainly haven’t gone the way of the Blade Runner axiom of “the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” Eternity hints at longevity.

And the pair continue—if only in quest of writing a perfect pop song. Fruitless, perhaps, but Roddick feels as though they came much closer with Another Eternity.

“These are the types of pop songs we were trying to write on Shrines, and we’re pretty proud of a couple songs in particular,” he says. “I think ‘Bodyache’ is the realization of when we wrote ‘Ungirthed.’ It’s the pop song I had in my mind. When I finally got there,” he says, snapping his fingers, “It felt like now it’s time to move on.”

As a band that started casually, essentially as an experiment in what James and Roddick viewed pop music could be in the ‘10s, Purity Ring have outstripped their wildest expectations, and in the process engendered a divine alchemy that’s ever evolving between the duo.

“When we started the band we hardly knew each other,” says Roddick. “We admired one another’s abilities, but we didn’t know each other. We got to know each other quickly in that first year, and we went from casual acquaintances to being huge parts of each other’s lives. It’s our career now and we’re hoping to do this for as long as we can. We were never expecting to be on this adventure together. There’s definitely highs and lows, but it’s cool.”

Note: This article first appeared in Under the Radar’s April/May 2015 print issue, which is out now. This is its debut online.]

(www. purityringthing.com)