Reviewed on Saturday July 25
Short answer? Lizzie Plapinger and Max Hershenow have really got this whole live music thing figured out.
Ms Mr’s appearance at the Metro is the second Splendour sideshow they have undertaken here in Sydney – the first being back in 2013 – and although I didn’t catch their debut back then, surely the writing was on the wall. After all, skip forward two years and they’ve already been invited back, this time touring sophomore LP How Does It Feel. The BRAG had interviewed Plapinger a few weeks earlier, and while both the new album and their first, Secondhand Rapture, are high-energy releases, they are markedly different; the reason, she explained then, was discovering her comfort moving before a crowd.
“I think I love being onstage more than anything now, and I only really discovered that about myself through touring the last record.”
It shows; there aren’t that many musicians out there whose sheer enthusiasm for performing is so pronounced. It’s particularly endearing given her dancing is slightly awkward, with one foot firmly in the pinwheeling-limbed ’80s. Nor is she alone; for a guy stuck behind a keyboard, Hershenow is a smiling, sweat-sodden mess by the gig’s close, and a bursting-at-the-seams Metro matched them every step of the way.
It’s difficult to identify a highlight in this consistently colourful, busy gig. ‘Salty Sweet’ and ‘Head Is Not My Home’ are both stand-outs from their first album, and translate brilliantly live. Plapinger infuses certain numbers with something almost mythic; studded with grand gestures and roaring vocals, it is as though she is barely keeping these songs chained to the stage. It would seem grandiloquent were it not so entertaining and, one suspects, sincere.
From the new album, both the title track and ‘Leave Me Alone’ are strong, but a song which Plapinger had not expected audiences to originally connect with, ‘Tripolar’, simply soars. You can certainly trace the band’s lineage across these tracks – from early Florence + The Machine influences to a more Chvrches sound – but seen live, Ms Mr emerge idiosyncratic and fresh. The sound of the audience’s approval is actually kind of intense; Plapinger’s beaming, repeated thanks to the crowd are mostly lost in a flood of cheering.
And man, these guys are sexy as hell. Although the pair are joined by drums and bass/synth, I’m not sure anyone at the Metro actually sees them. All eyes are fixed on the New York duo, and we only turn away in reluctance, resigned to wait another two years until we might get to experience such an exceptional gig again.
