WNHU teamed up with local promotional group Manic Productions to put on an incredible show at the Space in Hamden featuring The Mowglis, Misterwives and Finnish Ticket. With a playful name and an even more fun demeanor, opening act Misterwives really stole the show.
“It’s a play on the Mormon term ‘Sisterwife,’ vocalist Mandy Lee explained. “I just reversed the genders, so I married all the guys and they are my misterwives.”
When asked to explain their music in just three words, the band agreed fittingly upon. “Organic, soulful, and colorful,” she said.
Just deeming them a “pop” band would be like taking the bottom out from their sound. Lee’s vocal performance is gorgeous and is similar to Kristen Chenoweth had she taken the band route instead of Broadway. Even the stiffest of people wouldn’t be able to keep themselves from dancing because it’s just so infectious. They currently have an EP out called Reflections with very interesting cover art and a story behind it.
“We had a very small window of time to get EP artwork in so I had to draw it myself,” Lee said. “It was just an idea I had for a while…it’s basically all of our spirit animals coming out of a gramophone. It’s a reflection of us and the gramophone symbolized old world music. It’s trying to convey that there’s no BS to our music. It’s organic, and then coming out of it are all our animals.”
Lee is the elephant, for her “Dumbo” ears she was made fun of for as a child. Drummer Etienne is the octopus because he plays the drums and has a lot of eight symbolisms in his life.
“Etienne sounds like eight, born in October, octo-, it’s all there,” Etienne mentioned.
Will’s love of dinosaurs and pre-music dream to become a paleontologist made him the T-Rex.
“His mom used to bury chicken bones in the back yard so he’d go digging,” Etienne teased.
“When we went to our other two bandmates for their spirit animals, they were like ‘uhhh I don’t know.’ So the humming bird is a little bit of all of us…Then we like to say the gramophone is Jesse because it has a horn on the end and Jesse is a trumpet player,” Lee said, finishing off her description of the drawing.
Etienne added, “I told Mark that he is the hummingbird because it is the only bird that can fly backwards because of its fast wing speed, and he’s constantly going backwards retracing his steps because he loses everything.”
Besides playing music, the band shares a huge love of zombies, claiming they have a solid zombie apocalypse plan to survive. “So we have the Zombie Survival guide book, we watch the Walking Dead,” Lee said. “I’d be Daryl all the way.”
They also believe that living in Riverdale where they’re some of the younger people in the area gives them an advantage, “All the zombies would die of old age.”
When it comes to the very near future, they have a fairly set schedule.
“Yes, we’re going to record our full length album, we’re going to the UK and we’re playing festivals. 24 is coming back so we’re going to watch a lot of 24.”
Be on the lookout for a lot of tweets about their favorite, Jack Bauer. For comments on zombies and more, see the full interview on UNHMIC.tumblr.com and stay tuned as we’re updating the site weekly.
Thanks to Misterwives for being such an awesome group to chat with and WNHU for helping to put on such an amazing show.
