What strange brew is this? It fills me with a mixture of metaphors, and if you've ever plugged and unplugged your ears while listening to something (anything) then you've already got a feel for the kind of pulsing hypnosis present on nearly every track of the debut by Canadian future-pop duo Purity Ring.

And with this whole affair sounding something like "teenage witch and her ancient demon lover's book of spells and dreams," is "Future Pop" an accurate term for the creepycute compositions roiling off this record? Maybe so, in the sense that what's old is new and what's new is old and time may have no meaning after all. Deep thoughts.

This feels a little like an electro-pop "Night On Bald Mountain" for twenty-first century journal-junkie teenage girls. These guys are based in Montreal? Of course they are - Purity Ring's music would play well with the astonishing acrobatics of Cirque Du Soleil - wonderfully weird music for a wonderfully weird circus show - the singer would astonish with lyrics like "cut open my sternum and poke my little ribs around you" while international acrobats would astonish by spinning like tops on each other's pinky fingers...or something like that.

In the lyrics to "Saltkin" Megan James intones "there's a cult, a cult inside of me" but with the kind of hauntingly charming "future pop" songs found on Shrines, Purity Ring may also have a cult on the outside to deal with before they know it.