Purity Ring Creates “Many Lives” for Fantastical New Album

Since emerging in the early 2010s, Purity Ring has made a lasting impact on the electronic pop landscape. Their first album Shrines earned Best New Music honors and was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. Their breakout single “Fineshrine” went gold in the U.S., while “Grandloves” was sampled by Playboi Carti. They remixed Deftones’ “Knife Prty” for The Deftones’ 20th anniversary of their album White Pony. And they co-wrote three tracks on Katy Perry’s Witness.

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Now, with their self-titled fourth album, the duo shifts their focus from the physical to the fantastical. They’ve crafted a concept album that serves as the soundtrack to an imagined RPG.

Our American Songwriter Membership caught up with Purity Ring’s mj and Corin to discuss their songs, songwriting process, and the inspiration and stories behind their new album.

American Songwriter: First, congratulations on the new record. Let’s talk about the new single “Many Lives”. What do you remember about creating that song? 

mj: It was one of the last songs that we made. It was a living room song.

Corin: We were in the studio a lot. I think we’d gone a few days without coming up with anything new that we liked. So that day I took everything, mic and interface, laptop out into the living room just to kind of feel more casual. 

mj: New environment.

Corin: And it worked right away. The only challenging thing was like, my cat kept trying to step on the laptop. (laughs) But other than that, it was good.

mj: Yeah, and it was unusual for me, and I think this was also a product of not having made anything for a few days. That’s kind of the biggest thing that can get to us, I feel like, like that doom where it’s like, what if we never write anything again? 

Corin: Yeah, there’s a voice in the back of your head that you’re like, what if that was it? Every time you get stuck, there’s like a doom. 

mj: But yeah, because of that feeling, I didn’t care. I was just writing melodies.  So all the melodies came before words on that song, which is why there’s sort of more, I think, rhythmic parts. And it varies more because I was kind of like, let’s see what sticks. But yeah, a lot of parts worked. We used them all, I think. 

Corin: Yeah, and something else I remember, I was listening to a lot of RPG soundtracks at the time, sort of for inspiration. And one thing I noticed that was standing out to me that I really enjoyed was like, this use of classical guitar. That seemed like something that would fit in with that song. So that was the first song that we really kind of like, okay, it’s going to have this like proper classical guitar element to it. I’m not a skilled enough guitar player, so I just did it programmed. And then later, we got our friend from Edmonton, who’s a very good classical guitarist to come in and sort of riff on like the parts that I had tried to make.

Purity Ring’s new, self-titled album is coming September 26. The single “Many Lives” is out now.

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