
If you are keen to spend a night out forgetting about the world, you can’t do much better than a MisterWives concert. The only caveat is there’s little opportunity you’ll see them in the very near future. More on that later. We’ll get there.
Last week at Orlando’s Plaza Live the Manhattan quintent performed their penultimate show of their Just For One Night tour. For 90 sweat-soaked minutes the band carved through a set of their entire discography in a spectacle that was kinetic, effervescente and fluorescent.
Playing the majority of their most recent album Nosebleeds as well as two songs from the Nosebleeds: Encore album the set was high energy from the very first note. Frontwoman Mandy Lee had boundless energy and twirled around the stage like a whirling dervish. Whether it was the tenacity of “Rock Bottom” or the anthemic punch of “WhyWhyWhy” the quintet tore through their set with an effortlessness and polish that was downright mesmerizing.
Roughly five songs into the set Lee alerted the audience that this will likely be the band’s last tour for quite some time. “We need to live ordinary lives for a while, but this is not the end, I promise you that.” And maybe it was that sense of finality that pushed the band to deliver a hip-shaking, head-bopping, hair-flipping good time.
Lee and company are at their best when singing about resilience and tenacity and nowhere was that more apparent than on the near-perfect “Superbloom.” Equally as ferocious was the punk-inspired “Vultures” and the fist-pumping juggernauts “Machine” and “Trigger Pull.” Perhaps what’s so indelible about MisterWives is that for every fiery anthem there’s equal amounts of sun-drenched, carefree pop. The quickest examples of that were “Trip Around the Sun” and “Sideways.”
When it was time for an encore Lee was quick to acknowledge the fans for their support: “Thank you for giving us the best decade of our lives” before tearing into the buoyant anthem “Our Own House” the band’s first single and a fitting ode to a band that cross-pollinated genres effortlessly for the past decade.
Only time will tell when MisterWives releases another album and embarks on another tour but for those fleeting 90 minutes the future was on pause and everything seemed right in place. That’s the power of live music and the power of a MisterWives concert.

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