MISTER HEAVENLY - Out of Love LP
Comprised of Nick Thorburn (Islands/The Unicorns), Ryan Kattner (Man Man) and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse), Mister Heavenly is a threesome as charming and, sometimes, as tricky to pin down as their name suggests. At the very forefront of “doom wop” (more a state of mind than a nitpicky micro-genre), Mister Heavenly draws inspiration from a shared love of 1950s vocal-based RnB classics by ensembles like the Penguins, the Platters, and the Moonglows, and also a fascination with ill-fated romance. The album title, Out of Love, is both a nod to passion as a motivator (“I did it out of love”) and also the absence or dissolution of same (“She fell out of love with me”): two seminal lyrical themes in the annals of pop music. As it happens, the actual Mister Heavenly song “Doom Wop” owes as much to grunge and art-punk as it does ‘50s pop. When you mint your own style you can take such liberties.
