MisterWives Can’t Wait to Book Vacations in Advance After 10 Years

PHOTO BY MATTY VOGEL

New York-based band MisterWives may have been around for more than a decade, but the group is still exploring new sounds with their new album Nosebleeds. The band, made up of Mandy Lee, Marc Campbell, William Hehir, Etienne Bowler and Mike Murphy kicked off their latest tour in the Live Music Capital at Austin City Limits. 

Pleaser sat down with the group to discuss their career, vacations and collaborating with their favorite artists. 

Pleaser: The most recent album that y’all have put out has kind of a different sound than some you’ve previously released. When in the creative process y’all decide “we’re gonna do a little bit of a switch”? 

Mandy Lee: We did write almost a whole other album that did sound very in line with all our previous music. I just felt like I wasn’t doing a service to where I was at in life and the emotions were really the north star that said I went through so many changes I can’t just keep putting rose-colored lenses over how much hardships I was facing. I was angry and I was like “it’s okay to let this out.” I think we’ve always painted a rainbow over everything and I was like I think we’ve gotta just lean into where we’re actually at versus trying to make the narrative something else and sonically everything followed. 

William Hehir: And it was fun!

ML: It was so fun sonically! “Out of Your Mind” opened up a whole new world where we’re like “okay we’re going to be here, let's lean in and give ourselves permission to go as crazy as we want.” 

P: So has that changed how y’all are going to make other music moving forward?

ML: I think it’s always a good lesson to let yourself show up honestly.

WH: We don’t know where it’ll take us next.

P: When y’all released Nosebleeds how do you think the public perception influenced how you see the album?

Etienne Bowler: I will say it’s interesting some fans became fans for Nosebleeds.

ML: Yes, totally!

EB: Seeing them show up and they’re learning the older catalog and vice versa obviously.

Marc Campbell: It felt very embraced I thought. 

ML: It did! It was really embraced. It’s nice that our fans have always grown with us. Even Superbloom was a different sound and everybody's always just part of the evolution, which is really nice. 

WH: Yeah, I feel like we’ve never really just had one genre we were specifically into —

ML: That’s true. 

WH: So obviously there were pop elements in a lot of it, but that wasn’t necessarily running through the whole thing. I think people do embrace the change cause they’re acclimated to not one sound, just kind of a variety — 

MC: Even before those albums, the live show was still quite — like we would take sections of old songs and make them quite heavier so it wasn’t jarring at all. 

P: So as y’all mentioned on stage, you’ve been around —

ML: Oh no! [laughs]

WH: How long?

P: Over a decade, is there anything y’all would change or anything you would do the same looking back at your career?

EB: Oh my god, we were just talking about this.

WH: I’d probably change the music industry. 

[everyone laughs]

EB: Yeah, I was going to say something along those lines.

ML: Would love to start there! Yeah, a lot to change there!

P: Start at the bottom.

WH: Maybe eliminate some of the monopolies.

EB: I don’t think we would change anything, but the other night we were actually going down memory lane, looking at old music videos and old shows and old outfits, and we were like “what were we doing?” —

ML: But we were so free!

EB: But we were just free. And it was before social media we just — not that we care now, but it felt like we really didn’t care. 

ML: Cause I have a lot more anxiety now [laughs].

EB: Yeah, we just have more anxiety.

MC: But there’s so many bands we started playing with that aren’t still playing festivals in four albums. So I couldn’t change anything cause we’re still here and we’ve got so many huge milestones on our resume, it’s awesome. 

P: Are there any songs right now that you think everyone should listen to? It can be of yours, but if you wanna shout somebody out that you love right now.

WH: I’m a big fan of Nuns Of The Tundra.

ML: I’ve been loving Debbie Dawson, she’s amazing! Obviously, Chappell [Roan], but I don’t think anybody needs to hear about her right now [laughs]. I’m stoked we get to play today [on the same day as her], I can’t believe it. 

P: It’s gonna be so fun!

ML: I know, I’m the biggest fangirl, so it’s crazy to play festivals with artists you’re such big fans of. That’s I think one of the coolest parts of playing festivals. But of our music, “Organized Chaos,” “Vultures,” all the new stuff. We’re still in the album cycle promoting that record. Listen to “Nosebleeds.”

P: You mentioned on your Instagram that this was going to be the last tour y’all are going to do for a while, what do you want to do in the down time? Have you thought that far ahead?

WH: Yoga

EB: Sleep

ML: Sleep, try to find normalcy. I think we’ve never taken a break from the tour, album, tour, album. As much as it’s an incredible gift to get to do it, we’ve never allowed ourselves like “let’s hit pause and see where things fall into place after getting to recalibrate.” We’ll see where that takes us.

MC: I wanna book a vacation months in advance —

ML: Yes! I’ve never done that!

MC: Knowing that I can go on it. I grew up in the UK and even trying to go home, you can never book in advance cause something always comes up. The amount of times I’ve booked a trip home and been like “oh this shows come up, we have to go and do this.” 

EB: That’ll still happen.

[everyone laughs]

MC: Yeah there will be an offer that’ll come in like “we have to do this!” 

P: My last question for y’all, on Nosebleeds: Encore there were a bunch of artists that were featured on it. How do y’all narrow down the list, “we want this person, we want this person”? 

ML: Man, we were so thankful that all of those artists said yes. This was a big pipe dream to do an encore version of the record and get to give it another chance, cause it’s our favorite album and then invite all these incredible women to be on the record. Cause it felt like it really had to come from the point of view of a female artist cause so much of what this record is is about that and freeing suppressed feelings. I was like “we definitely need to get an all femme line up” and then I was like “okay that’s 14 songs, how do we do that?” [laughs] So it was really asking a lot of our friends that we’ve toured with that we’re big fans of and thankfully everybody said yes and — 

WH: Except Beyonce

ML: Yeah, sadly Beyonce passed on it 

P: So close.

ML: She said next time, she was just a little busy [laughs]. But, very thankful that we got such a bad*ss lineup on that record.