- You may have noticed a pair of kids blowing-up around the place, recently, taking Corin Roddick's indie-electronic base-plate and tricking it out with syncopated, cutting-edge urban beats adding Megan James shining bright vocals, delivering it all in a nearly physically stunning, sensory overload and blowing-damn-up. Without being ridiculously fast or thuggishly rude, really, sometimes it's all so in-your-face, so crowded, that it's hard to absorb what's going on. Some folks have called it daze-pop. Whatever it is, it hasn't stopped my frazzled data processing appendages from being a little bit tickled too. Yep, Purity Ring are a headrush definitely worth having. Their brand of illicit high first became available early last year, when Purity Ring's song Ungirthed started grabbing much attention round the intertubes. Since then the contents of the debut album Shrines has been slowly leaking out to a public that has been eagerly lapping it up. I've had the opportunity to go on the whole ride a couple of times, and it hasn't got old yet, which is a good thing, because as I've become accustomed to the constant high, I've realised that while Purity Ring can get you up there, they don't know how to do much else. The whole thing swaggers along at a mid-tempo groove with the sparkling trebles jammed up to maximum, Megan's scintillating vocals weaving in and out of the synthwork over beats that sound like they're trying to fill your middle-ear to bursting point. That little description will do four of the first four tracks, and it's not exactly a sledge: they include the excellent single Fineshrine, which, somehow, using exactly the same ingredients as the rest, comes up with the perfect permutation, slipping into my favourite track on the album spot. Grandloves finally opens up some space and gives it over to Young Magic to do their rap-sing thing. It foregrounds the hip hop / r'n'b elements of Purity Ring (without feeling any less, uh... white). I've heard some people hating on it, but I don't know why, I think it's a much needed change of pace and stylistically it fits like a glove. Emboldened by that experimentation, the pair take another tack on Cartographist. It's bass music, baby: pulsing and shuddering synths and pitch-shifted voices to break up the endless sunshine of the trebles. To be honest, I like this less than Grandloves, but, well, that doesn't mean I don't like it. You'd have to listen pretty hard but, later on, the track Saltkin throws in what turns out to be synthetic reggae, too. By then, however, Purity Ring are just about done with experimenting and head back to the airless peaks of their sound. The Purity Ring don't really sound like anyone else, exactly (great!!), but as music writers are wont to do, I've noticed folks straining for some comparisons. Some say they're maybe a bit like... The Knife, that gets chucked around; High Places too, yeah I don't know. Far be it from me to get in on that pigeonholing action, but, if everyone else is... OK. If you listen to the lyrics, you'll find that Megan James likes to cut against the grain of her perfectly pure, innocent sounds. There's some quite dark stuff going on. Take again Fineshrine: "Cut open my sternum and pull / My little ribs around you ... (yada, yada and then) / You'd build a fine shrine in me. What an offer! Of course, the little serial killer / snuff movie conceit works perfectly: all that overbearing purity cut with a streak of indecent darkness: instant crowd-pleaser! Honestly what's wrong with you people? I immediately started thinking of other bands who employ the same sort of trick: something brittle and beautiful besmirched with just the right amount of badness. The first two that came to mind are, apart from having syrupy- sweet-sounding ladies out the front, both stylistically quite different: goth-brat-metallers The Birthday Massacre and the deliciously cheesy Broken Social Scene offshoot, Stars. Interestingly both are, like Purity Ring, Canadian, I wonder if it's a Canadian thing?
Purity Ring almost certainly have a bit of work ahead of them trying to figure out exactly what they are and what they want to be, because if they don't, I predict their next album is going to be a bit of a disaster. Fortunately, right now, it doesn't much matter what exactly they are, when every time you switch them on you get carried away on a complete high. Matter of fact, I may be feeling the urge to go and listen to the album just one more time, right now.

- Chris Cobcroft.