The Art Of Writing To Forget

Now, they’re both living in Los Angeles. Well, for the next few weeks. That’s how it’s gone since the release of Shrines, with James getting used to the modern musician’s itinerant-minstrel lot. “I’ve had to learn to not have a home; to make your home inside yourself rather than in the things that surround you,” James explains. “It’s been a shift in the way I perceive myself and my surroundings, to the point where it now feels normal, this job. And it is a job. It has pretty strict schedules, and you cannot have a normal life. Even when it feels utterly normalised, it still feels like living inside a dream.”

"Writing is a way that I can perceive myself from a bird’s-eye view."

With second album, Another Eternity’s release, Purity Ring are spending the foreseeable future on the road. And in the live setting, the duo shines, their tours for Shrines memorably finding them performing in total darkness save for lamps, triggered by Roddick’s electronic percussion, and illuminated ‘cocoons’ lit by the frequencies of James’s voice. “In every element of the band, we want to go all the way there, make it something that’s really inventive; something that’s more interesting to watch, more captivating than just trying to translate our songs to a live band. That seems so absurd, to us, to aspire to anything so run of the mill.”

The least run of the mill element of Purity Ring is James’s lyrics and Shrines found her assembling a catalogue of viscera and Cronenbergian body-horror; Another Eternity is filled with elemental natural imagery, of planets and tides, sea and sand. “The new record is more about open spaces, whereas the first record was about more internal spaces. I write so that I can forget about things, so that I don’t have to think about things anymore. When I go back and look at old things, it shows me how I was at that time. I feel like the songs are what define the stages of my past. Writing is a way that I can perceive myself from a bird’s-eye view. So, writing in terms of body-oriented metaphors, or nature-oriented metaphors, that’s the kind of beauty that I want to see around me.”

Hearing her sing of celestial bodies in the single, Begin Again, one wonders if James is drawn to astrology? “I appreciate its mentality in regards to how to make decisions. It’s nice to have astrology as a lens through which to look at how you should go about your life. Every time I read my horoscope – which isn’t that often – I always feel, good or bad.”