Affect Analysis of Purity Ring's Another Eternity.

Purity Ring occupies a pretty special place in my musical heart.

They’re one of the last bands from my CBC Radio 3 Phase, when I listened to Canadian music and nothing else, and they feel like a sound I discovered before I became fixated on reviews as I embarrassingly still am today. Also they incorporated the obscure genre of Witch-House which I have pleasant memories of listening to while stoned in my friend’s bedroom.

Shrines is a great album – extremely personal, interesting sonically and with some great snare patterns. Grandloves shines in particular, it is a song that delivers a real emotional payload to me. I associate that song with the bittersweet affect of my last relationship and the two of them are intermingled in a way that I can’t get out of my head.

So recently I got the leaked version of another eternity. I had enjoyed Push Pull and Begin Again leading up to it, and I was pretty excited, and I waited to be in a good mindset to enjoy the album. My reaction has been odd.

They talked about it on BBC and said it was less personal, and it shows – but there is still something there to like.

I don’t like it as much as Shrines, that’s an easy thing to get out of the way. A part of me is knee-jerking to say “too pop, too trap”, or as a friend (Jake Pitre) put it “trying to be big”. But there’s also something about it that has me coming back to it a few times. I’m writing this review as an early emotional response just in case it ends up growing on me like Yeezus did and I can look back and it will be great.

The opener sort of boldly shows the change in sound on the first note. Much less dark. heartsighs has a lot of big audacious sounds, bells and whistles – it is not the understated reflection that Shrines had. That said, Megan James still has a beautiful voice, and the chorus has some sweetness to it. This song is in a way a microcosm of my feelings of the whole album, it’s kind of too much but at the same time there is something in the centre of it that gets me.

The album moves on to bodyache which I actually quite like. But again, I don’t like it in the same way that I liked Shrines. The bridge really reminds me of CHVRCHES. Then you have push pull – a pretty good single, which I liked before the album was leaked. repetition is vintage Purity Ring – the lyrics reference body and it has a more somber slow and bittersweet tone. That said if it was on Shrines it would have been one of my less favourite tracks.

stranger than earth is where they start getting very trap-y, big audacious arena-y drop, lots of claps. I’m not sure how I feel about this, at some point I might come back to it. The little bridge where the track drops is nice.

Then there’s begin again which I don’t have too much to say about, I liked it more before its placement on the album.

dust hymn is quiiite audacious. More hand claps, very trap-y beat and very EDM synth lead. This would be my example of them “trying to be big”. It’s a big sounding song. Again time will tell if I get bored of this song or love it.

I don’t really like flood on the floor. Kind of a grindin’ drum beat for the verse. REAALLY ~big~ chorus. Still Meghan James sounds good on it. It feels like it could have been the closer. It’s got kind of a movie soundtrack feel to it.

sea castle has some weirdness to its verses but then its chorus kind of turns me off.

stillness in woe is the song that really gets me on this album. It is sweet and light and slightly somber, all the things I loved in Shrines. I definitely feel something in the beginning, and I love the verse/bridge, but then it goes somewhere with the chorus that I’m not sure if I like yet. This song is the sort of juicy core of the album that makes me keep coming back to it, and I think if I get fully sold on it I will be fully sold on the new sound that Purity Ring is going for.

That’s my affect based analysis of another eternity.