Photo by Instagram user maureenhidalgo
Purity Ring has a lot to prove. As any new band with a lot of buzz, being good on record is one thing, but performing those pristine recordings effectively in front of a crowd presents a new challenge. Luckily, the Montreal duo lives up to the hype, and if its Wednesday night sell-out at the Rock and Roll Hotel was any indication Purity Ring, has a long career ahead of them.
Openers Headaches and Evian Christ primed the crowd well for their headliner. Both acts were on point. Overused as this term has become, Headaches (nee Landon Spears) could best be described as chillwave. His tracks recalled early Neon Indian, before Alan Palomo got a band and got out of his bedroom. Spears’ atmospheric tracks were the perfect start to a great three act bill.
Evian Christ, London producer Joshua Leary, also sprung from blog-hype comparable to Purity Ring’s. He started as an anonymous producer making dark trap rap-inspired R&B/hip-hop and putting it up on YouTube with little to no information. After getting signed to the always dependable Tri Angle label, Leary stepped out of the shadows and came into his own. This year Evian Christ re-released his debut mixtape Kings And Them on vinyl and has been killing it on stage ever since.
His set featured a mix of highlights—”Thrown Like Jacks,” a track that samples both Grouper and Tyga, “Payo Rent” and “MYD”—and was welcome in adding a little attitude to the show, but similarly confused the audience ready to see Purity Ring. Blending witch-house aesthetics and Chicago Footwork vocals, Leary ended his set with a hyped up version of fan-favorite “Fuck it None Of Y’all Don’t Rap.” The house DJ kept Evian Christ’s momentum going blending dark productions and Nikki Minaj’s “Beez in the Trap” tracks getting the crowd hyped as fog started to envelop the room.
Purity Ring has played this area before, and are three-for-three in sell-out shows. Since releasing its album-of-the-year contender Shrines, the band’s stage show, which is pretty homespun, has lost its children’s theater curtains and added a mess of paper lanterns. Beat maker Corin Roddick got an upgrade to his Midi sampler as well. Formerly just a group of pipes, the piece now has lights that blink when the sample is activated.
Singer Megan James was both the host and tour guide of the evening. She cut through the fog and atmospherics with a utility light in one and hand a mic in another. The visuals were timed perfectly to compliment the gauzy and haunted sounds of the band. After taking the stage to the sounds of an extended sample, Roddick hit his pipes to start an amped up version of early single and album highlight “Belispeak.” The momentum didn’t let up as the band went through album tracks like “Amenamy” and “Fineshrine.”
The one lull in the set (which is also the lull on the album), “Cartographist,” took a little while to warm up, but it was the first track to feature James’s light-up kick drum that had been resting on stage. True to the album version, the track blended into “Saltkin” with its catch chorus of “There’s a cult/There’s a cult inside of me.” In truth, the cult was all around Roddick and James, as fans eagerly devoured their tracks.
Unlike the band’s first show in D.C. at the Black Cat’s Backstage, where we were clearly watching a new band try to impress the uninitiated in a see-and-be-seen environment, this show was filled with true fans that have had time to fall in love with the band’s record. But the band is no bullshit, and only has one record to its name, so when the clicking intro of first single “Ungirthed” started, everyone knew the end was near. The band played an exquisite version of album closer “Shuck” and then left the stage leaving the fans wanting more.
Purity Ring didn’t play an encore, but the band didn’t need to. Yes, it only played ten of its eleven tracks, but it’s getting into its own, and will surely be back in D.C. before you know it.
