Purity Ring | The El Rey Theater in Los Angeles | 04.18.13

Our third show this week brought us out to the El Rey in LA, which is a great little venue but has an odd layout so we're always a bit torn about seeing shows there. Brandon's not a big fan of standing throughout a whole show because of his back and knees, but sometimes they do have chairs lining the walls or we kind of find room against the railing, so it's kind of a crap shoot. Although I am not nearly as into Purity Ring as Brandon is, I could not pass this one up because I was incredibly curious as to what their live shows might be like. They are a Canadian duo made up of a guy and a girl, and I had read that they use "a custom-built, tree-shaped instrument to drive both live sound and lighting" and "both wear clothes custom designed and sewn" themselves. Their music is ethereal with hauntingly freaky lyrics, and since they are mostly electronic they certainly speak to me on some level, especially after watching the  weird ass video for my fave song of theirs, Fineshrine.

Once again the doors were not till 8 so we were able to leave late and got there pretty quickly. For some reason, however, the doors were still not open when we go there so we had to wait in line for a while. Thankfully the delay in opening the doors didn't push back the show time too far. I never mind hanging out at the El Rey. The pre-show music was a mix of hip hop and top 40, which kind of surprised us but the crowd seemed to be eating it up with a spoon.

 

I am not really sure what genre Purity Ring fall under, but I guess opener Blue Hawaii fits the same bill: guy on the sampler mixing beats and sounds, girl wailing weird combinations of words and phrases. They announced that they would be starting out slow and building, and they surely did that. At first they were a bit meek, the singer admitting she was very nervous, hair in a ponytail, standing still. By the end, her hair was down, she was dancing and flailing around to the hard thumping rhythms they were cranking out. It wasn't until halfway through that although they were dressed very plainly (him: buttoned white shirt, her: over sized Purity Ring t-shirt and jeans) I noticed that they both had slashes of grayish green paint across their eyes. I kind of loved that random dash of oddness; it suited them well. I was definitely pretty pumped after watching them, as was the rest of the crowd. When they left the stage, the pop warm-up music resumed, culminating with Taylor Swift's Trouble, which is apparently a big hit with the hipsters?? No idea wtf was going on there, but pretty much every person in the room (besides us) was dancing and singing along. As soon as it ended, the lights went down and Purity Ring triumphantly entered.

 

Before I get into the performance aspects, I need to paint the backdrop for this tale. Bear with me, because I really don't know the proper names for much of what we saw, but I will do my best to accurately describe everything, and thankfully Brandon took a ton of pictures to help illustrate. The stage was dominated by long thin poles from which hung large cocoon-like lamps. To the right was a bass drum on a tall stand, and to the left was a rig made up of the control panel with smaller lights surrounding the male half of the duo. These lights seemed to be connected to the music, and he would play them like drums which would light up when struck.

The singer prowled the stage, often holding up an orange work light like a torch. She was marvelous, seeming to me to be a demented, menacing fairy queen, luring us into her enchanted (possibly dangerous) forest.

She clutched at her dress, clawed the air, mussed up her hair, all with a twisted smile on her face and a gleam in her eye.

At times she would pound the bass drum and cause it to light up - I likened it to a full moon while Brandon got the impression of a beating heart.

This was truly a piece of performance art from beginning to end. We could not take our eyes off the pair of them the entire time. They were so in sync, so dramatic, so deeply committed to what they were creating for us. I could not stop smiling. On a purely superficial note, about 2/3rds of the way through, the lights became quite a bit brighter and I got a good look at the male half of the duo. Wow. So lovely. Never cracked a smile till they were leaving the stage, but I thought he was quite beautiful in his intensity. They ended rather abruptly and did not come back for an encore, despite the crowd chanting "ONE MORE SONG!" long after the house lights came up.

Finally! A show we both agreed was a thoroughly entertaining evening for everyone. I was honestly scared when I turned around to look at Brandon afterwards and get his reaction because there was NO way he could possibly refute the magic we had just witnessed and still be my husband. Thankfully we were both firmly on the same page and spent the ride home rhapsodizing about our experience.

Next up: Japandroids at the Glasshouse on Monday! How the hell can we go wrong with that?