Shrines (album)
| Shrines | ||||
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| Studio album by Purity Ring | ||||
| Released | July 24, 2012 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 38:20 | |||
| Label | 4AD | |||
| Producer |
Purity Ring
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| Purity Ring chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Shrines | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 76/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| The A.V. Club | A- |
| AllMusic |    |
| Robert Christgau |  |
| The Guardian | |
| NME | 9/10 |
| Pitchfork | 8.4/10 |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Spin | 7/10 |
| Tiny Mix Tapes | |
Shrines is the debut studio album by Canadian electronic music duo Purity Ring, released on July 24, 2012 by 4AD. The album's title comes from the line "Build it into pinnacles and shrines of some / Some ghastly predicament of mind you'll find", from the track "Obedear".
The album spawned four singles: "Ungirthed", "Obedear", "Belispeak", and "Amenamy". A music video for "Lofticries" was released on Pitchfork's YouTube account.Shrines was listed 24th on Pitchfork's staff lists top 50 albums of 2012 and 14th on the readers poll. The album was named a shortlisted nominee for the 2013 Polaris Music Prize on June 13, 2013.
The first song the duo did together was "Ungirthed". They did not intentionally plan Purity Ring to be a long-term project: "it was just something to do. We were really happy with it though, and the response was amazing, and then the next tracks came together and we thought, hell, why don't we make an album out of this." Megan described the process of making Shrines as very long, "intense and intensive". Corin reasoned that "we needed to get the album done, and let's say whilst we like to perfect things in the studio, we work best with a deadline." They described themselves as perfectionists and an "album band", in that "we want to get every track right, we want each thing we release to be as good as everything else. What is the point in flooding out music that doesn't satisfy us? Or worse, lets the listeners down?"
Megan was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Corin residing in Montreal producing his instrumentals, and how far apart they were at the time, 1300km, was a part of developing each song, as it put newness and freshness to the tracks. Corin described the process of making the instrumentals: "Late nights, sometimes I'll stare at my laptop for hours; sometimes I'll take an idea, a five second snippet that I'll run with over and over and over". Corin then sent it to Megan for her to sing a rough vocal sketch over it, with Corin's waiting leading to excitement and anticipation of not knowing what the final song would sound like when Megan sent it back. He described what he would do with a song after Megan sent it back: "I'll often need to rearrange them to create a focal point. And that might mean moving something else that was underneath to a different part of the song, or just removing it altogether. I'm not very precious with any part of any track when it comes to trying to make it into an actual song; if it's taking up too much space, I'll gladly get rid of it."
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