Purple Pilgrims – Given To The Night

Purple Pilgrims — the New Zealand-based dream-pop duo composed of sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon — have returned with the announcement of their forthcoming third album, Given to the Night, out November 27 via AD 93. The project translates their signature kaleidoscopic sound via telepathic sibling connection, focusing on introspective themes of finding light in shadows, and exploring the inbetweens.

Coinciding with the album announcement, Purple Pilgrims have also shared their record’s first single, “Innocence Lost”, a dreamy example of their signature kaleidoscopic sound.

Says the duo:

“It often feels like our songs are little messages from our futures selves, communications from the other side of things. The meaning tends to reveal itself with time. This song was very much that.

“Heartbreak is an ultimate inevitability of love — the discomfort in trying to accept that duality, and the idea that even at one’s lowest ebb, it’s still possible to maintain a spark of hope, an endless fascination with life. Night as a metaphor in various guises appears throughout Given to the Night — in this song nighttime feels abundant with magic, mystery, possibility — albeit coloured with sorrow.

“‘Innocence Lost’ is a smoldering spark of hope in the darkness, the feeling that although it’s pitch-black there might be something glowing just beyond, out of view.”

Truths and secrets often reveal themselves at night, under the freedom of shadowy darkness, away from prying eyes. In creating Given to the Night, sisters Valentine and Clementine Nixon have crafted a world that drifts through the in-between: between dream and reality, between day and night and the undefined, and, ultimately, a world that embraces the discomfort of being untethered. It came to be in a process that followed simplicity and intuition, rather than pre-determined narratives: “We recorded songs as they appeared, which sometimes felt like catching light. Before we realised it we had a record”, the duo explain.

While making the record, Valentine and Clementine gently pushed away from the world — deleted social media, retreated into the trees of their native New Zealand, and only inviting a couple of people in during the recording process. From that space, the album came together in an eerily easeful way.

There is a dream-like drift and sonic timelessness to the the record, as reflected in its nocturnal title, which can be read in two ways: “Being taken by, or being inclined towards nighttime, preferring its blurry cloak of shadows to the harsh light of day; or giving oneself up to night, in sacrifice, letting go of fear and melting into the darkness.”

Written during a time of personal transition there was “a sense of finding the light in the shadow” they add. Guitar lines float, synth lines entwine, tapes hiss, and vocals stream creating a kaleidoscopic montage of transient memories and emotions. A spectrum of feelings arise — isolation and joy, insomnia and manic highs, confusion and fleeting clarity, grief and healings. In the record, these feelings all merge and fade into one another in a nonlinear manner, as life tends to do; creating something deeply human that simultaneously gestures towards the transcendental.

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