Mister Heavenly comes to St. Augustine Nov. 8

By Ryan Buffa | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Mister Heavenly will be playing at Café 11 on Nov. 8 on their tour for their new album, “Out of love.”

Mister Heavenly is a collaboratation of indie rock veterans Ryan Kattner (Honus-Honus) of Man Man, Nick Thornburn of Islands and The Unicorns and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse.

What some call an “indie-supergoup,” Mister Heavenly is really just a “sum of the parts,” said Mister Heavenly drummer Joe Plummer. “We all bring our ideas, sound, ability and inabilities to the table.”

Each member brings a different quality and element to Mister Heavenly’s sound. “Ryan brings a romantic gruffness to the versus and chorus,” Plummer said. “Nick is sort of the crooner and has the modern guitar thing goin’.”

“I would say that I bring the anchor,” Plummer said. “I’m inspired by playing with other people”

Perhaps what is truly “super” about Mister Heavenly is their ability to grasp irony and turn it into a unique and harmonious sound. Their album “Out of love”, released in August, takes advantage of what each member can offer and creates a sound that is their own.

“Mister Heavenly creates our voices as the entities as it is,” Plummer said. “It’s impossible to sound like a split between Modest Mouse, Man Man and Islands”

The yin-and-yang effect of Mister Heavenly is especially apparent in the harmonies between the smooth voice of Thornburn and Kattner’s notorious gravel vocals.

Mister Heavenly self created a new genre, “doom-wop”, which is a mix of 50s style guitar and rhythm inspired by “do-wop” elements with a modern dark twist.

“Doom-wop” is romantic and light hearted, but with the irony of dark lyrical content.

Plummer refers to this new genre as consisting of the “same rhythms of ‘do-wop’ but a lot darker” and full of “cute little anecdotes about bad things.”

Mister Heavenly formed after Plummer and Kattner met touring together for Man-Man and Modest Mouse. Kattner and Thornburn met towards the end of the Unicorns and thought that the combination of their voices would be interesting. Plummer joined in and anchored down the “doom-wop” and brought in the experimental idie-pop sound.

“It was fairly black and white how it started,” Plummer said. “It was an experiment to get together at first.”

Through the recording process and experimental stages, Mister Heavenly seemed like it was meant to be. “It just kind of fell together and we like it…it seemed tangible,” Plummer said. “A seed of a song was planted and grew from there”

As for the “super group” label, Plummer denies the title. “I don’t feel super, I really truly don’t, but I can see why and how we could be referered as that,” Plummer said. “We were just 3 people who wound up playing together.”

However if Mister Heavely was more of a superhero, Plummer knows exactly who they would be: “It would be called Mister Heavenly, the superhero. And it would consist of Ryan and Nick as the Wonder Twins and I would be Aquaman. So they would be my two sons…it’s more of a familial reference than our superpowers. I’m more like a young uncle to them.”

Whatever power, genre, and musicians Mister Heavenly comprise of, “Out of love” will give you the feeling of falling out of love with someone over a milkshake at a dinner. And that’s a good thing.