Graves
Purity Ring are back, having recently released this stunning little EP ten years after they entranced my 2012–13 summer with the surging synths and potent-yet-dreamily-sung sensuality of their first album, Shrines. Sure, there were a couple of albums in between, but neither felt nearly as fresh or exciting as that original encounter. This feels different.
As the album art reveals, our revenants have brought seven lovely companions in tow: severed heads trailing exposed arteries and vertebrae, hair radiating ghostlike around them. The songs are a delicious combination of poppy and deranged. The music, in particular, feels at once more adept in danceability and more confident in weirdness—and positively relishes weaving the two together. The lyrics, delicately evocative in their poetry, are playfully enunciated with what I can only describe as a coy but all-consuming passion. Overall, everything has gained in power since the first album. Here beauty and death dance together; the sensuality of Shrines has grown succubic.
Let’s turn back to these gory apparitions on the cover, and hear what each has to say as we encounter the EP’s seven songs:
Our entrance is announced by a trembling, ghostly drone. We behold the first apparition (mouth open wide), who immediately begins to sow seeds of enchantment around us. “Shudder me / Flutter me / Cover me / Mutter me,” she sweetly commands. She sings about wishing for “weightless knees” (dark humor, we think, for a floating head). “What are you?” we ask, allured yet more than a little afraid. “Our heads are all ablaze,” she answers with exhilaration, as her hair billows like flame caught by a gust. “Where are you going?” “We’re running from our graves.” A shudder passes through us. Quivering tendrils of synthetic music stretch forth and begin to twine themselves around us, lulling us into a daze. For a moment, reality blurs... We realize what is happening, snap back to ourselves. “Take me, oh, take me,” we leave the first head imploring.
The second ghost–head flickers into focus and then conjures up a sunset scene at the seaside. We see her there, embodied, in the arms of her beloved. We feel with her the splendor of the sun upon the water: “How I cried when I tasted the liquid gold.” We feel her blissful adoration for her lover: “Washing it down with the words you spoke…” What happened to him? “You sailed away on a sunken boat”—the only dark hint she utters. The scene morphs before us: now darkness, save a female figure illuminated by a lone, old, flickering fluorescent light. We hear her thrashing about in grief and anger, battering the wall beside her and her own bruised body. We see a crimson tide receding… is this the sunset we saw earlier, or something more macabre? We recall her repeated refrain,—“Do it again, do it again”—as she fades out to begin the whole process over again, neverendingly reliving her love and anguish.
In horror, we run. The third head appears, mournfully singing something to herself. Her voice suddenly brims with power as she sees us. Dead trees sprout and grow around us as though abundant with life; their dry branches crowd and prick our flesh. It seems that, for a moment, the head felt—hope. And yet, moments later, her voice droops once more, the trees shrivel: “You know I know that nothing’s fine…”
The fourth (pupils fully dilated, mouth and nose obliterated) announces herself with giddy delight. Fireworks boom and ignite the dark sky behind her. We see a group of youths sprint through hotel halls, plunge in swimming pools, scramble, dripping wet, onto rooftops while security guards shout, dogs bark, and the fireworks continue to boom. “As we moved out, there was a sign in the elevator: ‘No explosives allowed’…” She gives us a wink. “But we never were sign-readers.” Suddenly, we see shattered, blood-soaked limbs twisted around shredded metal. “How lucky you are to be so unlucky,” she sings (mouthless) at the bloody scene.
We abruptly drop down into fresh darkness. As we cautiously gaze about us, the fifth ghost calls out: “Give me just a moment, or get me up and out of here...” The head floats closer, an anguished, pleading look on her face. As she does so, a powerful wind seems to rush against her, cast her hair (and neck-viscera) behind her, preventing her from getting closer than 10 feet. We see a coffin in a grave, dirt slowly but determinedly heaped upon it. As it tumbles in, little rocks in the soil click against the wood of the coffin, creating a disturbingly pleasant rhythm. A man weeps as he shovels. Beneath his sobs, the thud of the dirt, and the clicking of rocks we hear something else, incredibly faint—a gasp—a scratching—a stifled shriek. “And I could never get close enough to you.”
The sixth head glides smoothly toward us. “Just came to say goodnight,” she begins, sultry allure rippling beneath an innocent surface. A dim-lit bedroom appears; we see a man sit up on the side of a bed, first startled, then intrigued—then eager. “I was just so shy,” she sings to us in an aside, and smirks. We see her, now embodied, delicate hands grazing against his chest, wrapping around his waist. We see their lips touch, cautiously first then with mounting fervor. We see clothes fall to the floor, her lithe form recline on the bed, eclipsed beneath the mass of his muscled body. We hear a feminine whimper, a dull male moan of desire. “Sing me a la-la bye-bye…” she says with seductive self-composure. We hear a desperate, distorted male scream. Sharp teeth grind flesh as blood drips from the bedsheets. Some primal force pulls us closer; we resist—just—manage to wrench ourselves away.
The scene dissolves. The desire kindled in us lurches into disgust, settles slowly into sadness. In the darkness of whatever realm it is we’re stuck in, we descry the very back of a final, seventh ghost–head as she flees. Mournful–sweet music of farewell echoes about the place. We never see her face. A pure, serene silence fills the space. Shaken, seduced and strangely exalted by the journey, we emerge again into full reality.
Note: I didn’t do any research about Purity Ring or this EP before writing this post (nor do I know very much about music). I doubt much of this captures the meaning intended by the band. Consider this, therefore, merely a creative experiment in portraying my feelings and crafting a story in response to the art and songs.