04/11/13
Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow. They sound creative, don’t they? You can’t hem a Plapinger and a Hershenow into the same monotony as a, say, Sarah Brown (sorry Gord’s missus). But with these two creatures, by any other name, they’d smell as god damn funky. Oozing stylistic intent in their music and every other endeavour, they formed a pop tour de force when they got together as duo, MS MR. They are colourful and vibrant – not least with Lizzy’s ever-changing hue of hair – but they control their own dimmer switch. They know when to bring down the light, bring down the mood, make introverted what was moments before thrust in your face. They could well be your new favourite pop band. A sold out US tour would suggest so, and domination will continue as they come to Norwich this month…
So, to take you a little way back, you both met when you attended Vassar College – what did you graduate in? Was it completely alien to music?Lizzy majored in Media Studies and Max in Urban Studies. Both are interdisciplinary courses so it meant that we could take classes in all sorts of programs, which definitely informed our ideas about mixed media and collage, even if they weren't always about music specifically.
Vassar has some classy alumni – you’re doing better than Jackie O, as she didn’t complete her studies, but Meryl Streep did. Was it a particularly creative, or nurturing environment?Both! It was a pretty incredible experience. Students were really excited about what they were studying and it definitely felt like a hotbed of creative expression and exchange. Even after we've graduated the Vassar community is still incredibly engaged in and supportive of what we're doing.
You played a few UK festivals this year, but this is your first UK tour. Have you been pleased with the reaction here, and do you have any expectations of the tour?We've been so fortunate to have spent so much time in Europe and the UK over the past year and a half! From the beginning we were very vocal about wanting to tour all over the world and definitely felt like the music would connect in the UK (Lizzy was actually born and raised in London). We've had such an incredible time every time we've performed in the UK - it's so exciting to perform in bigger rooms every time we come back and to see more and more people singing the words!
Lizzy – you grew up in London, didn’t you?LP: I did indeed :) Born and raised until I was 18. To me, it will always be home.
Max, I’m interested in your background too. I read you were studying at the Martha Graham Academy when you got together with Lizzy, is that correct? I love all forms of contemporary dance, and love how most of it’s rooted back to a handful of practitioners – Graham, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham… I was wondering if you’d thought of choreographing one of your videos, and which practitioner you’d most like to pay homage to?MH: I'm glad to hear you're a modern dance fan! After graduating from Vassar, I spent a semester in a graduate program at the Martha Graham School (I dropped out soon after we started MS MR) and dance has always been an important part of the way I think about music. I would love to choreograph a video at some point (or to compose music for someone else's work!). If I were to pay homage to any choreographers, I think they'd probably be the contemporaries of the ones you mention - I'm a huge fan of Larry Kegwin, Doug Varone, Ohad Naharin and Wayne McGregor.
I don’t often watch music videos, as I like to make up the pictures myself, but yours are a joy to watch. They’re a stylistic extension of your music – do they play an important role for you?Thank you! We really appreciate that. The music has always been the most important and driving force of the project but we're both very visually oriented people and we embraced the opportunity to develop a fully fleshed out aesthetic to accompany the music. It's an incredibly satisfying element of the project and is a chance to expand and experiment as artists, especially since we are so obsessed with mixed media and collage.
Talking of a stylistic extension, let’s talk hair – you must have a seriously good colourist…?!LP: Yes I do! I'm so lucky to have found Lena Ott who colours my hair! I've been dyeing it since I was in high school really and it's amazing to connect with Lena and allow her to see my craziest hair fantasies into realities! She always encourages me to follow my next questionable hair idea [LAUGHS]
It’s fair to say that America has got behind you as a band – all your tour dates there are sold out – that must be a great affirmation that you’re doing a good thing?It's mind-blowing! Ultimately we just made music that we both really loved; the fact that people are connecting with it is just amazing. We're just incredibly appreciative and humbled by the whole experience.
I’ve been really enjoying your album. Musically, you’ve been described as pop, but that sort of doesn’t do justice to its complexity of moods – it’s quite sombre. Did you already have an idea of the sonic palette you were hoping to achieve before making it?Again, thank you! We proudly identify our music as pop because for us pop can mean so many things and be found in so many different genres. A core ethos of our band is experimentation and we tried to incorporate a wide array of genres and sounds to keep pushing ourselves as artists. There really wasn't much discussion before we began about what kind of band we were going to be or the music we were going to make; it was much more visceral and organic than that. We just wrote on a track-by-track basis until we had a collection of material. From there, we found the threads of similarity that brought it all together.
‘Salty Sweet’ is a great change of pace. It’s jaunty, and mixes things up nicely. Do you feel like you’ve got a tonne more sounds to experiment with?‘Salty Sweet’ is probably our favorite song to perform live and holds a real sweet spot for us because it developed so much through the whole process. We both absolutely feel like there is so much for us to play and experiment with - these are the first songs we have ever written so we're really only just starting to scratch the surface of what we're capable of.
I read that among other things, you can’t live without mixtapes – if you had to make one for each other, what would be on it?We absolutely love mixtapes - so much so that we make them for our fans through a series we call Track Addict that we give away for free on our Soundcloud. Honestly, those are a good barometer of the sort of things we're listening to and the artists we're excited about, so check it out!
And you also love to get in to a boxset – I’ve come late to the party on Game of Thrones, but I love it… How cool was it when you got chosen as the music for the Season 3 trailer??!It was completely wild!! It's our favourite TV show so we were just excited as the next person for the Season 3. AND THEN they used our song for the trailer! It's the dream sync.
Emma R. Garwood
MS MR come to The Waterfront on November 26th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read the full version of this interview on Outlineonline.co.uk
Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow. They sound creative, don’t they? You can’t hem a Plapinger and a Hershenow into the same monotony as a, say, Sarah Brown (sorry Gord’s missus). But with these two creatures, by any other name, they’d smell as god damn funky. Oozing stylistic intent in their music and every other endeavour, they formed a pop tour de force when they got together as duo, MS MR. They are colourful and vibrant – not least with Lizzy’s ever-changing hue of hair – but they control their own dimmer switch. They know when to bring down the light, bring down the mood, make introverted what was moments before thrust in your face. They could well be your new favourite pop band. A sold out US tour would suggest so, and domination will continue as they come to Norwich this month…
So, to take you a little way back, you both met when you attended Vassar College – what did you graduate in? Was it completely alien to music?Lizzy majored in Media Studies and Max in Urban Studies. Both are interdisciplinary courses so it meant that we could take classes in all sorts of programs, which definitely informed our ideas about mixed media and collage, even if they weren't always about music specifically.
Vassar has some classy alumni – you’re doing better than Jackie O, as she didn’t complete her studies, but Meryl Streep did. Was it a particularly creative, or nurturing environment?Both! It was a pretty incredible experience. Students were really excited about what they were studying and it definitely felt like a hotbed of creative expression and exchange. Even after we've graduated the Vassar community is still incredibly engaged in and supportive of what we're doing.
You played a few UK festivals this year, but this is your first UK tour. Have you been pleased with the reaction here, and do you have any expectations of the tour?We've been so fortunate to have spent so much time in Europe and the UK over the past year and a half! From the beginning we were very vocal about wanting to tour all over the world and definitely felt like the music would connect in the UK (Lizzy was actually born and raised in London). We've had such an incredible time every time we've performed in the UK - it's so exciting to perform in bigger rooms every time we come back and to see more and more people singing the words!
Lizzy – you grew up in London, didn’t you?LP: I did indeed :) Born and raised until I was 18. To me, it will always be home.
Max, I’m interested in your background too. I read you were studying at the Martha Graham Academy when you got together with Lizzy, is that correct? I love all forms of contemporary dance, and love how most of it’s rooted back to a handful of practitioners – Graham, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham… I was wondering if you’d thought of choreographing one of your videos, and which practitioner you’d most like to pay homage to?MH: I'm glad to hear you're a modern dance fan! After graduating from Vassar, I spent a semester in a graduate program at the Martha Graham School (I dropped out soon after we started MS MR) and dance has always been an important part of the way I think about music. I would love to choreograph a video at some point (or to compose music for someone else's work!). If I were to pay homage to any choreographers, I think they'd probably be the contemporaries of the ones you mention - I'm a huge fan of Larry Kegwin, Doug Varone, Ohad Naharin and Wayne McGregor.
I don’t often watch music videos, as I like to make up the pictures myself, but yours are a joy to watch. They’re a stylistic extension of your music – do they play an important role for you?Thank you! We really appreciate that. The music has always been the most important and driving force of the project but we're both very visually oriented people and we embraced the opportunity to develop a fully fleshed out aesthetic to accompany the music. It's an incredibly satisfying element of the project and is a chance to expand and experiment as artists, especially since we are so obsessed with mixed media and collage.
Talking of a stylistic extension, let’s talk hair – you must have a seriously good colourist…?!LP: Yes I do! I'm so lucky to have found Lena Ott who colours my hair! I've been dyeing it since I was in high school really and it's amazing to connect with Lena and allow her to see my craziest hair fantasies into realities! She always encourages me to follow my next questionable hair idea [LAUGHS]
It’s fair to say that America has got behind you as a band – all your tour dates there are sold out – that must be a great affirmation that you’re doing a good thing?It's mind-blowing! Ultimately we just made music that we both really loved; the fact that people are connecting with it is just amazing. We're just incredibly appreciative and humbled by the whole experience.
I’ve been really enjoying your album. Musically, you’ve been described as pop, but that sort of doesn’t do justice to its complexity of moods – it’s quite sombre. Did you already have an idea of the sonic palette you were hoping to achieve before making it?Again, thank you! We proudly identify our music as pop because for us pop can mean so many things and be found in so many different genres. A core ethos of our band is experimentation and we tried to incorporate a wide array of genres and sounds to keep pushing ourselves as artists. There really wasn't much discussion before we began about what kind of band we were going to be or the music we were going to make; it was much more visceral and organic than that. We just wrote on a track-by-track basis until we had a collection of material. From there, we found the threads of similarity that brought it all together.
‘Salty Sweet’ is a great change of pace. It’s jaunty, and mixes things up nicely. Do you feel like you’ve got a tonne more sounds to experiment with?‘Salty Sweet’ is probably our favorite song to perform live and holds a real sweet spot for us because it developed so much through the whole process. We both absolutely feel like there is so much for us to play and experiment with - these are the first songs we have ever written so we're really only just starting to scratch the surface of what we're capable of.
I read that among other things, you can’t live without mixtapes – if you had to make one for each other, what would be on it?We absolutely love mixtapes - so much so that we make them for our fans through a series we call Track Addict that we give away for free on our Soundcloud. Honestly, those are a good barometer of the sort of things we're listening to and the artists we're excited about, so check it out!
And you also love to get in to a boxset – I’ve come late to the party on Game of Thrones, but I love it… How cool was it when you got chosen as the music for the Season 3 trailer??!It was completely wild!! It's our favourite TV show so we were just excited as the next person for the Season 3. AND THEN they used our song for the trailer! It's the dream sync.
Emma R. Garwood
MS MR come to The Waterfront on November 26th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read the full version of this interview on Outlineonline.co.uk