Ms Mr are the male/female, gay/straight dynamic musical duo about to take the world by storm
Since we first heard the seductive hooks, atmospheric beats and darkly introspective lyrics of ‘Hurricane’ we’ve been sold on Ms Mr. To find out more about the inner workings of their minds we caught up with the enigmatic duo whilst they were in London to talk music, songwriting and creative connections…
How did you two meet and how did the band come together?
Lizzie: Max and I both went to school in upstate New York but we didn’t actually meet one another until after school, when we both graduated. Max was a dancer and I was running my record label Neon Gold where we were looking for new artists that could really take off with a producer. I really loved the overview of the music that Max created and for whatever reason I felt like I could trust him, so I sent him some stuff that I’d been working on and luckily I think there was a bond of trust formed from that first initial exchange until we first got together that year it was just incredible. Musically we just happened to be on the same page, working with one another in the studio. From there we didn’t even think necessarily about things in advance, didn’t even really know what we were doing yet, we just kept writing and it wasn’t until we had a real portion of material that we were like ‘maybe we should start releasing some of this on the internet.’
Was it an easy route to your current position or did you have to do a lot of bad gigs and grinding beforehand?
Lizzie: You have to pay your dues and Max and I were really appreciative of people giving us so much hype but for us it’s definitely about laying the foundations out so that we can do this for the rest of our lives and build things slowly because I think we don’t want to be an overnight success, you know? We want to work hard and get to a point ourselves where we feel like we’ve earned it.
You said you were running a record label, Lizzie. Are you still connected to that label?
Lizzie: I’m still running the label with my business partner but honestly it hasn’t affected the way we operate at all or anything in terms of creativity. If anything it’s definitely given us an industry perspective on the other side of things, on the business side and it’s sort of allowed us to take more control of the project and the label.
Who does the songwriting? Is it a collaborative role?
Max: The songs are definitely 50/50 so that we have half of each song, we don’t feel more connected to any one song than another.
As a gay man and a straight woman does this differ at all in how you creatively approach the songs?
Lizzie: No, I don’t think so. We don’t really think about what a song is developing into, we think the song sort of leads us as it develops.
Max: I think what is most important to our creation, if that’s the right word, is the fact that we didn’t know each other at all before we started and we happened to be on the right page only through the music. That’s the best thing, people look for this connection with people for years, and we happened to find it straight away you know.
You’ve covered Patrick Wolf, are you big fans of his work?
Lizzie: We both like him but I wouldn’t call either of us huge Patrick Wolf fans.
Max: We were in the car on the way to our first session, and Lizzie made me listen to it literally on the way to my house. She was like ‘I really like this song, do you like it to?’ So it was going back to that connection.
Who are your favourite musical artists?
Lizzie: I’m a huge Gwen Stefani fan, Garbage, Lauren Hill, Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I definitely have a soft spot for motown and country and all that.
Max: I love Britney, I love pure pop, I love Robyn, I love Beyonce. I loved Scandinavian ladies like Llyke Li, Falluhah, and then I come from a more roots background, like Bruce Springsteen and other artists.
So a very eclectic mix?
Lizzie: We’ve got a lot of music on the brain!
Okay, and one of the final questions: where would you ideally see yourselves in a year’s time?
Lizzie: In a year we’d be winding down a very successful first album campaign and starting to write our second record which is something we’re already thinking about and excited about.
And finally, what’s the next big gig where we can see you perform?
We’re playing at the Electric Ballroom in London on July 17th, as well as Glastonbury and other festivals in the summer.
