Before MS MR had written a song, the band already knew how they would initially release their music, conceiving a Tumblr rollout strategy complex enough that Wired first reported it. The project was originally the idea of Lizzy Plapinger, co-founder of boutique NYC pop label Neon Gold, and it was consummated when she started working with producer Max Hershenow. After putting out a few singles under the guise of anonymity, they made music to fit the Tumblr plan in the form of 2012’s Candy Bar Creep Show EP. They put out one song a week, alongside “obsessively curated” images and remix stems.
In his review of Charli XCX’s debut, True Romance, Marc Hogan called for a moratorium on treating internet platforms as musical genres, and rightly so. But even as MS MR break their umbilical connection to Tumblr to release their full-length debut album, they’ve supplemented Secondhand Rapture with what they’re calling “Secondhand Captures”-- a different visual treatment for every song available online; made up of videos of eerie, wretched glamor and corruptible, all-American innocence. MS MR’s desire to give their music a visual analog is interesting, but you wonder about their ability to create a record that can be listened to on its own.
, I kinda just figured it went without saying as it's the intro to Meet Me in the House of Love, isn't it?
