Biography
Purple Pilgrims are Clementine and Valentine Nixon, a sister duo from Christchurch, New Zealand. Great-granddaughters of the Scottish folk musician Davie Stewart — whose songs were recorded by Alan Lomax — the sisters grew up steeped in oral folk tradition alongside an itinerant childhood that moved between Christchurch, Hong Kong, Borneo, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Their parents were an artist and a classicist; their grandmother was a poet. That heritage seeps into every corner of their music: devotional, ceremonial, and suffused with a sense of ancient continuity.
Valentine Nixon was an early member of Warble, a Christchurch post-rock group formed while she was still at high school. The sisters began making music together seriously in the early 2010s. In 2011 they released a self-titled 8″ lathe-cut via Pseudo Arcana — mastered by Brian Crook of The Renderers — capturing their earliest live sound: keening, ethereal folk songs run through op-shop guitar effects into a single tiny amp, music of complete simplicity and devastating emotional directness. Purple Pilgrims also worked in the visual arts, producing zines that combined drawing and collage. By this point the duo were based in Hong Kong.
A split LP with New York avant-garde musician Gary War followed in 2013. Their debut album proper, Eternal Delight (2016), was recorded in isolation at a family property in Tapu on the Coromandel Peninsula, surrounded by native palms and bush. The album’s title came from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven & Hell. Released on Not Not Fun Records and mastered by Brian Pyle, it drew immediate international attention — its ten tracks of hazy dream pop compared to Kate Bush, Beach House, Dead Can Dance, and the Cocteau Twins.
Aotearoa’s answer to haze-pop pioneers Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins.
Stuff
In 2018 they contributed to guitarist Roy Montgomery’s album Suffuse. Their second album, Perfumed Earth (2019, Flying Nun Records FN589), was recorded at Paquin Studios in Auckland and featured the haunting “Ruinous Splendour” with Montgomery. The record extended their palette into lusher, more produced territory while retaining the sisters’ signature soprano harmonics — voices compared by critics to Marianne Faithfull, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, and Vashti Bunyan. They toured internationally, performing alongside Aldous Harding, Ariel Pink, John Maus, and Weyes Blood.
From 2023 they began releasing music under the name Clementine Valentine. Their debut under that name, The Coin That Broke The Fountain Floor (2023, Flying Nun), was recorded in New York with producer Randall Dunn. Rolling Stone Australia ranked it #2 among the best New Zealand albums of 2023 and #12 in their best of the 2020s list. In 2025 they contributed backing vocals to The Chills’ final album Spring Board.
Members
- Clementine Nixon (vocals / guitar, Purple Pilgrims, Clementine Valentine)
- Valentine Nixon (vocals / guitar, Warble, Purple Pilgrims, Clementine Valentine)
Discography
- Purple Pilgrims 8″ lathe cut (2011) – Pseudo Arcana
- Split LP with Gary War (2013)
- Eternal Delight (2016) – Not Not Fun Records
- Perfumed Earth (2019) – Flying Nun Records (FN589)