Misterwives deliver avant-grade pop bombast performance at Belasco Theater

With their freshmen attempt Our Own House released earlier this year, New York’s Misterwives joined the ranks of young indie pop acts in an already saturated genre. But like their counterparts, West Coast’s Echosmith and Scottish Chvrches, the trio have grown to become a redefining hurricane of self-assurance and avant-grade pop bombast that goes well beyond their years.

Wednesday night the tireless crowds that packed themselves into the Belasco Theatre found themselves soaked to the bone in the glitz and glam of Misterwives glow. Dripping with a feral energy, lead singer Mandy Lee dazzled and twirled onstage, her auburn hair a dizzying blaze and her velvet croons a swooning dream. On crowd favorites like “Reflections,” Lee’s vocals burst like glitter cannons alongside the song’s soulful bass line. But it’s on songs like “Coffins,” stripped of synth, that the young singer echoes the incredible vocal prowess and soul of a young Florence Welch. The control and poise Lee displays, her ability to leap from the falsetto peaks and drop down to a rumbling tenor–all whilst dancing like a whirlwind onstage–it’s easy to forget this isn’t a pop star with decades of experience.

From the tantrum of dapper-pop and sizzling electric guitar cuts in “Imagination Infatuation,” to “Twisted Tongue”, where brass trumpeting and wild percussion rolls like honey off Lee’s sultry vocalizations, MisterWives kept the fire burning long into the night.

It seems almost a crime to call it pop music, because the breadth of their eclectic talents and tones couldn’t possibly be defined by the plastic, connotative footnotes that come with labeling something pop. It’s lush and hopeful, seeping at the brim with strings, brass and the sumptuous cries of what is probably the best rising lead female vocalist out there today.

That’s what pop should be–under Misterwives, that’s just what it might become.

Waters, a rock ensemble of folk and synth roots, opened for MisterWives. Check out the photos below of Misterwives and Waters at The Belasco.

Words & Photography: Steven Ward

Misterwives