Ever since Eurythmics hit big in the early 80s, there has been a set formula for male/female electropop duos. The girl sings, and is the face of the band, whilst everyone wonders in this post-Bat For Lashes world if it's a moniker or indeed a band name. The guy does all the serious music stuff behind the scenes, and whilst she is the focus of interviews he comes across quiet and mysterious (read: personality bypass). The golden rule is that at least one of them has to dress like Mr Benn vs. Brick Lane and dye their hair unnatural colours.
New duo MS MR (aka Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow - try naming them after a few drinks) may or may not fit those categories. What's certain, however, is that they have already been making huge waves on the internet's metaphorical ocean. It's clear to hear why - MS MR's Hurricane is the kind of "dark pop" Natalia Kills/Verbalicious wishes she could make, and the supporting clip is David Lynch meets Lana Del Rey's Video Games:
Charting popular culture all the way from the bright side (a snippet of ABBA's Take A Chance On Me video) to the dark (a scene from 80s low-budget horror film Xtro), to the downright weird (at 1:10 there's a naked man holding an expensive breed of cat) - the subliminal images flash by so fast that stopping the video to catch up would ruin the song.
Caught somewhere between the melancholia of Desires, and Summer Camp with extra lashings of ginger depression, Hurricane chills you from the moment the intro drops. The haunting continues with their thunderstorm of a followup Bones, which, like Hurricane, is taken from the EP Candy Bar Creep Show:
Whether or not MS MR are Mr and Mrs (she's taken a feminist stand but refused to change her title by changing her original title to an ambiguous title - how hipster), remains to be seen. That said, the angst has got to come from somewhere, so if anything they're probably divorced.
Either way, their debut album Second Hand Rapture is due out in May.
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