Video game soundtracks don’t get as much recognition as they probably should. I still remember the one for Super Mario Galaxy: the triumphant fanfare-turned-spacey overture, the sweeping string-heavy leitmotif, that poignant symphonic suite during the climactic reunion between Mario and Rosalina in the game’s finale. As arbitrary as they may seem, these sounds are valuable not only in immersing the player into the environment of the game they’re playing, but also in giving texture to the act of exploring a reality separate from and more imaginative than our own. These sounds also carry an important formative quality, aurally summoning fond memories of being a kid and experiencing the escapism and sensorial pleasures of video games before the hardships of growing up came into full view. Canadian electronic duo Purity Ring have attempted to reconjure that sense of wonder by creating both a tribute to and emulation of the worlds and sounds of early 2000s video games for their new self-titled record, their first in five years.
The result is a dreamy soundscape that moves in fits and starts, occasionally delighting with its bright and pretty breakbeats and comforting retro-fetishist energy, but never quite gelling into an emotionally satisfying whole. Perhaps that’s by design. Most video game soundtracks, after all, are curated to exist less as a strict curation of songs and more as a loose assemblage of ambient noise that’s meant to be as playful as the games they’re scoring. In that regard, Purity Ring mostly succeeds, creating a visceral sonic backdrop that recalls the pixelated whimsical adventure and Y2K apocalyptic melodrama that defined the video games of the early Aughts. Still, one wishes it were as moving as James and Roddick seem to want it to be.
It makes sense that the band would try their hand at crafting something this nostalgia-inducing. Their influential 2012 debut shrines acts as a time capsule of sorts, capturing the millennial malaise and creative exuberance that powered the indie music scene in the early 2010s. Their plush, glossy sound works in that context and fits snugly with the atmospheric sonic design synonymous with games like Final Fantasy X and Nier Automata, both of which serve as thematic and tonal inspirations for Purity Ring. Lead singer Megan James is also perfectly suited for this kind of experiment. The delicate, ethereal lilt in her voice evokes a childlike curiosity that glides nicely across Corin Roddick’s glitchy production style. Purity Ring certainly sounds (and is titled) like the soundtrack for a fictitious video game, one that, according to James and Roddick, follows two digital avatars of the duo on a “journey to build a kinder world amid the ruins of a broken one.”
The song titles offer a glimpse into what that expedition looks like: opener “relict” refers to a survival of extinction, midpoint interlude “mistral” denotes a kind of winter wind that blows through France into the Mediterranean, and closer “glacier::in memory of rs::” suggests a bittersweet reckoning with reaching a destination while losing someone along the way. But while the album’s aim to evoke the earnest hope of embarking on that kind of quest is admirable, the emotion behind that goal doesn’t quite register as strongly as intended.
At its best, Purity Ring recalls M83’s DSVII, another wistful ode to a bygone era in pop culture that lets the listener fill in the album’s narrative and emotional gaps with their own imagination. Some tracks like the twinkly “memory ruins,” the rave-heavy “place of my own,” and the propulsive “between you and shadows” are effective in channeling the hyperdigital fantasy world James and Roddick are attempting to construct. Other tracks, such as the rock-tinged, vaguely Phoenix-inflected “imanocean” and the Studio Ghibli-like “red the sunrise,” surprise in their subtle yet unconventional compositions. “many lives,” the album’s strongest track, represents the best of the band’s qualities, with James’s pitch-shifted cooing and Roddick’s thumping, starry-eyed D&B delivering sugar-rush thrills. The futuristic instrumentation and choral background vocals alone are enough to make you want to dust off and fire up your PlayStation.
However, like the songs on actual video game soundtracks, a lot of the tunes here are pleasant in the moment, but there’s a vague sense that every song kind of sounds the same, just with slight variations in tempo and structure. James’s lyrics somewhat help cut through the monotony—she’s always been adept at evoking striking, impressionistic imagery in her songwriting—but although she paints a vivid picture of the album’s loose narrative arc, the gestures she makes at her virtual stand-in’s desire for freedom don’t really hold much weight. There are some exceptions, such as the ghostly existential narration on “red the sunrise” (“They say when we die / We fall”) or the vibrant poetry on “many lives” (“Long as the road of dreams where I leave you / Blue as the veins we separate into”). But because her and Roddick’s characters aren’t playable, it’s harder to conceptualize what it would be like to actually be on the journey with them, to feel what they’d be feeling, leaving the record to feel more like an exercise in pastiche than a gripping odyssey.
These issues somewhat undermine the album’s impact, despite its clear and tangible passion in tapping into the sonic touchstones of the early 2000s. Purity Ring will certainly make you yearn for the days of the pre-Twitch era, when the act of playing video games was still considered a relatively exciting and fun experience and not the soul-deadening, heavily commodified industry it is now, but a hit of nostalgia can only last for so long.
Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.
