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Jul 31, 2023 By Kat Ramkumar Photography by Veronica Corckford-Pound + Joseph Griffen

Clementine Valentine, Aotearoa/New Zealand pop duo formerly known as Purple Pilgrims, shared a new song last Wednesday titled “The Rope,” which was the latest release from their upcoming album The Coin that Broke the Fountain Floor. This LP, which was produced by Randall Dunn (Oneohtrix Point Never, Danny Elfman, Zola Jesus, SQÜRL), is due out August 25 via Flying Nun. Check out the video below.

Clementine and Valentine, who are both sisters, draw from the essence of their familial musical heritage, coming from a long line of musicians and storytellers. “The Rope,” featuring harmonies that coil and unfurl, is akin to a siren song as it pulls listeners in for a second look.

Of the song, the band say in a press release: “ ‘The Rope’ acts as a motif to connect us to our ancestors - we wanted it to feel as though it could be both ancient and of now. A feeling we call ‘ancient futurism’ - something we’ve been chasing in our songs for years now. We were reaching for a feeling simultaneously sinister and comforting as, to us, so many ancient songs are.

We’ve always listened to a lot of new music, but the core of our creative expression has always come directly from our deep familial folk music traditions. This is something that has not always been easily identifiable, perhaps due to the fact that we’ve never been interested in making ‘folk revival music’ - there’s no finger picking on any of our family records. The folk element in our songs is on a DNA level, stretching back beyond the 1960s wave that folk music is commonly associated with.

Having felt for a long time that pop, and (more importantly to us) lo-fi or bedroom produced music, to now be the true music of the people (accessible to all) - we finally decided we wanted to use more acoustic and ‘traditional’ instrumentation to express this feeling of modernizing relics.

Although our personal tradition of using an excess of synthesizers is still very much present all over this album, ‘The Rope’ is very stripped back for us and tells the story of our family music in a way we never have before.

‘by ways of old, make something new, the rope.’”

“The Rope” features percussion by Matt Chamberlain. The accompanying black and white video was directed by PICTVRE—the creative duo made up of Veronica Crockford-Pound and Joseph Griffen inspired by 1960s films such as Alphaville and Persona.

The duo have previously released the songs “Time and Tide,” and “Endless Night.”

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