Purity Ring // Hollywood Theatre

On May 25, Purity Ring turned the Hollywood Theatre into a multi-dimensional soundscape and 987 was there to try and take it all in.

The Edmonton duo of Megan James and Corin Roddick have always been as focused on atmosphere as they are on songwriting, and that came through immediately during the Vancouver stop of their Place of My Own Tour. Opening with “many lives“, the song’s swelling synths and dreamlike atmosphere set the stage for a performance that felt less like a sequence of songs and more like entry into a carefully constructed world.

The most striking element of the production was a series of spinning LED fan displays suspended through stage. Instead of traditional screens, Purity Ring used them to project floating 3D images that appeared to hover in midair. Stars, symbols, landscapes, and ghostly and fantastical figures drifted in and out of view, creating visuals that felt uncanny and constantly shifting. At times it was genuinely difficult to tell where the physical stage ended and where James began.

What made the visuals work was how closely they served the music. They never felt like a distraction or an attempt to overwhelm the audience. Early in the set, “Obedear” drew one of the night’s strongest reactions (or at least from this reviewer). More than a decade after its release—and years after its appearance in the cult-loved Search Party—the song still hit with the same mix of sweetness and menace that helped define Purity Ring‘s early work. As the music intensified, so did the lighting and projections; when the arrangements pulled back, the production followed suit, leaving space for quieter moments to breathe.

James‘ voice remains the emotional center of Purity Ring‘s music. Live, her vocals carried the same delicate, floating quality that first defined the band, while Roddick‘s production provided the contrast: massive synth textures, deep bass, and rhythms that could feel crushing one moment and weightless the next. Together, they recreated much of the atmosphere that made albums like Shrines and Womb so enduring.

The set wandered through new and older material. It felt like an effort to fully realize the visual and thematic ideas surrounding the band’s self-titled record. Fantasy influences appeared throughout the staging, but Purity Ring approached them with restraint. Rather than spelling everything out, the show let mood and imagery do the storytelling.

That sense of restraint ultimately became one of the performance’s greatest strengths. Many electronic shows rely on sheer visual excess, while others can feel detached despite their scale. Purity Ring found a balance between the two. The band closed with “place of my own” and “begin again“, ending the night on an intimate note. After 90 minutes of meticulously crafted visuals and immersive sound, the final songs wound the set down and waved goodnight in the stars.

9.87/10

Photos: Mikhail Din

Review: Alex Jardine