With ‘WOMB’, Purity Ring Have Crafted The Perfect Album For This Anxious Moment
Accidentally, 'WOMB' describes our shared anxiety - and provides some warmth.
“I’m not sure if the weird feeling is because the album’s coming out, or because of the state of the world. It’s probably a combination,” says Megan James, speaking via Skype on the eve of the release of WOMB. “There’s a lot of feelings these days.”
It’s, of course, a very different release period from what was planned. The Canadian alt-pop duo had months of touring locked in — while ‘comeback’ is a stretch, the band had taken three years off live shows, and it’s been five since their second album, Another Eternity.
In the downtime, the duo (James and producer Corin Roddick) tried something new by writing a trio of tracks for Katy Perry’s maligned 2017 album Witness. You wouldn’t pick it: the songs carry only sparks of Purity Ring’s trademark production of otherworldly electro-pop, where corrupt synths and James’ crystalline vocals create something eerie-sweet.
After the band emerged in 2011 with ‘Belispeak’ and ‘Fireshrine’, Purity Ring’s glitchy-synths were emulated across pop and hip-hop to the extent that when Another Eternity arrived in 2015, the band lagged behind the sound they helped define. Accidentally, they were in a machine.
“Corin and I both have always made pop music, according to our definition of pop music,” James says. “That’s how we’ve always defined ourselves. But then in the ‘world’ of pop music, like that’s not necessarily a place where we have existed — with Another Eternity we were definitely more aware and conscious of that. But with this record, it was like, ‘Well, what do we make by ourselves?’ ‘How do we give each song it’s own world?’.”
For WOMB, the band worked without a deadline. In James’ own words, they wanted to “give each song space”, rather than construct a sound around a few central songs. “You have to give a lot of space if you want something to feel like it has space,” she says. While things remain within the duo’s wheelhouse, Womb‘s expansive production unfolds with repeat listens, tied together less by one cohesive sound than the album’s warmth, even in its witchier moments.
“When I listened to the songs we had for the first time, I was so comforted,” James says. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I needed. This is why I make art, this is the point’. And then, ‘Oh, I hope other people can feel all this’.”
WOMB hasn’t arrived as planned, but pushing the album back didn’t seem like an option.
“It just so happens that, that a lot of people need that [comfort]… I really do hope people feel it and if that’s what people need right now, then, that’s great, it’s put to use.”
A Strange Comfort
If WOMB has a thesis line, it comes in the chorus of lead single ‘Stardew’.
But to get there, in classic Purity Ring style, the album’s lyrics wrestle with the elements in strange, unnatural ways. Most often, water crashes down and drowns, but there’s plenty of flying, digging and falling too, echoed in the album’s skittering, moody trap-indebted synths. It’s not exactly the recipe for warmth James describes, but the songs often give way to some moment of clarity or stillness.
It all leads to closer ‘Stardew”s outro, where James seems to sing to herself, “I know it just seems far/But just be where you are”, a line she says has floated through her head since 2013.
“I was living on the East coast of Canada and I had this dream where somebody else said to me, ‘Megan, it’s okay. Just be where you are’,” she says.
“[But because it’s a dream], it was essentially me saying it to myself [but] it seemed very wise and it seemed like it didn’t come from me. It was advice I needed at the time… and I say it to myself very often, because I always need to be reminded of that — it’s the constant quest, not the arrival.”
When the song was released, music sites reported it was named after fantasy farm simulator Stardew Valley, which, despite having logged “hundreds” of hours into, James laughs off.
“It’s one of my favourite games,” she says. “But no, it seemed like a fitting name — I think with whether or not the game existed, that song would be called ‘Stardew’.”
Still, it calls into play the irony of ‘being where you are’ as a hopeful mantra coming at a time where we’re remaining at home as much as possible. James feels it, but thinks it still works: it sweeps in at WOMB’s end with peaceful resignation, a simple answer to the many anxieties expressed throughout. Those anxieties aren’t necessarily clear-cut, as James’ lyrics deny narrative to the point that she says her own intentions aren’t always clear.
“I don’t realise what the meaning is until long after [recording it],” she says. “This is completely true — I’ll reread the lyrics to a Shrines song like today and I’d be like, “Oh, that’s what that’s about”. I’m not totally aware of what I’m saying, it’s just something I have to get out of me. And then I can define it after.”
In time, we’ll be able to describe 2020’s swirl of anxiety, boredom and grief. For now, WOMB expresses something awfully similar, accidentally or not.
Purity Ring’s Womb is out now via 4AD/Remote Control Records.
Jared Richards is Junkee’s Night Editor, and is on Twitter.