How Does It Feel

How Does It Feel

• New Store Stock

In 2014, Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow came back to New York City to start work on their sophomore album as MS MR. Only three years had passed since the first time they d met up in secret, former college classmates with day jobs, spinning musical fragments into private worlds in front of Max's laptop in Brooklyn. They made their name on their early songs "Bones" and "Hurricane."<br><br>MS MR has amassed 30 million album streams, played festival main stages, become known and celebrated as an alt-pop duo with a wide magnetism, a contagious exuberance and a distinctly technicolor style.<br> <br>This sonic directness makes How Does It Feel the rare second album that feels more personal than the first. The sound of the record puts Max and Lizzy up front, magnifying their disparate, complementary backgrounds, bringing them out of the surreal, shadowy atmosphere of their early releases. In the dynamism in the album's melodies you can hear the way that Lizzy, born and raised in the UK, still has the midnight energy of the London indie pop scene in her veins; there's a plurality and energy to her vocal lines that invokes her work developing other artists as the co-founder of the boutique pop label Neon Gold. There's a sense of brazen forward movement and physicality that suffuses every song, telling of Max's adolescence in Latin America, of the band he started at Vassar, of his time as a choreographer and dance student at Martha Graham Dance Company.