Album Review: Purple Pilgrims – Perfumed Earth

Some music has such idiosyncratic qualities that any attempt to capture its spirit in words is flirting with unforgivable pretentiousness. So it’s with great trepidation that this reviewer tackles the graceful second long-player from plummy-voiced Kiwi sisters Purple Pilgrims.

Seriously, it's the sort of record that might've been written on a snow-capped mountaintop, gazing down on an ancient lake whose waters are said to have healing properties. Hiking 'round Valentine and Clementine Nixon’s headspace is an enchanting excursion, through the reverberating harmonies of I'm Not Saying and the deeply sonorous Ruinous Splendour whose bass hums meditatively.

The single Two Worlds Apart is nice enough, but even lovelier is its ambient sister Delphiniums In Harmony: Two Worlds Away, which glides along like an untroubled zephyr. Elsewhere the ambling and irresistibly poppy Ancestors Watching is further proof the Cocteau Twins might’ve been one of the most influential bands of the '80s after all. 

Their ethereal music sometimes slips by in a way that leaves you oddly undernourished, but there's so much character to Purple Pilgrims' sound that it's hard not to give just a little piece of your heart away.