Canadian electro-twosome Purity Ring take their name from a piece of jewellery worn by Christian teens as a pledge to abstain from sex before marriage. It’s a fitting association for their icily self-contained music. Singer Megan James, whose Twitter handle is the speaks-for-itself @waryqueen, drifts across the stage as if in a dream, unreachable; keyboardist Corin Roddick has literally put himself on a pedestal, where he’s securely lodged behind a semicircle of stalk-like lights that ping on and off when he touches them.
The most evident reference point for their sound is the Cocteau Twins, whose influence touches even song titles: Lofticries, Belispeak and Fineshrine make it into tonight’s set (but not, sadly, Crawlersoul or Saltkin). Each is brief – 14 songs are jammed into this shortish show – and dense with percussive and vocal loops.
James, whose white catsuit is a plain utility garment rather than a Dolly Partonesque eyepopper, sings with the faraway blankness of a Debbie Harry or a Britney Spears, but her lyrics are gorily visceral: “When our parts parted, she bled and bled and bled,” she sighs on the she sighs on the opening Stranger Than Earth, which culminates in a rave-style breakdown, though the rave it evokes is the nightmare-inducing kind.
The set is filled with songs from the new album, Another Eternity, an EDM-laced departure from the chilly atmospherics of their debut, Shrines. Live, though, the new tracks assume different forms: Repetition becomes oozy trip-hop, Roddick weighs in on his drum-pads to turn Dust Hymn into a muscular processional that climaxes with James climbing on to a platform above him, where she’s silhouetted against a full moon.
Lighting is a major feature: James wanders through a forest of fairy-lights; neon tubes are synced to blaze into life along with the beat. The only thing we can’t quite see is Purity Ring, who are dimly illuminated dream figures, lost in their music.
• At Manchester Cathedral, 2 May. Box office: 0845 413 4444. Tickets available at altickets.co.uk. Then touring.
