Purity Ring – Another Eternity

Album artwork can speak a thousand words. Take the sleeve to debut Shrines, an eerie, dark cartoon: girl embraces sheep, ghostly hands paw at floating lungs. It aptly established Purity Ring’s haunting, doll-like sound (and its smiling body-horror lyricism). Conversely, Another Eternity’s cover gleams: suspended girl ascends to a pink supernova, as shiny as its production.

Corin Roddick’s processed beats again sound mechanistic, drawing on hip-hop and electronica for an otherworldly synthesis. But where Shrines felt grounded, reeking with earthy unease, Another Eternity’s more procedural compositions form a sugar-frosted fortress in the clouds. And it suffers for it: the moments of poetry (Sea Castle, Dust Hymn) are outshone by the bling and cloying autotune (Push Pull, Repetition) cutting off the blood supply. Megan James’ vocals once mixed cute ‘n’ creepy, sweetly singing about cutting us open; her newfound android pallor is no longer fairytale-weird, but a cold pop mannequin with no heartbeat.