Purity Ring Packed Webster Hall [photos]

Photos by Ethan Feuer

Purity Ring and Young Magic packed Webster Hall shoulder-to-shoulder on Saturday night, and it’s highly doubtful that fans of either outfit came away disappointed.

Young Magic was an exceptional opening act, a band whose entire presence can only be described as airtight — from the deftness of their graphics and album art to their epic, orchestral, yet deeply melodic psych-noise sound. After the sweetly muddy vocals, drums and belltones died down, an endearing moment occurred, as their smiling drummer snuck back on stage and snapped a few memento shots of the throng in the pit.

Screams erupted as the sheet on Purity Ring’s one-of-a-kind, tree-like sampler platform was removed and the first notes of “Amenamy” sounded. Megan James’ voice was almost drowned out during the first few bars by the crowd’s singalong, but it won out as everyone settled into a stunned sort of attentiveness, enjoying the massive stream of samples, delays, reverbs, pitch-shifts and synths that makes up the body of the tracks on Shrines. The band closed with “Ungirthed” and, finally, “Fineshrine”, which brought on a completely predictable, but no less enjoyable, wall of joy-screams that (maybe just) made it out to the street.

Purity Ring

Young Magic