The night of May 27, the Santa Barbara Bowl was awash with bright neon lights and pop rock melodies so polished they practically glistened as they hit your ear. Formerly up-and-coming, now recently arrived, indie radio rockers Walk the Moon and openers MisterWives were responsible for the vibrant evening of four-chord revelry and clean cut rebelliousness.
The concert started off with Manhattan indie pop act MisterWives, a fivesome led by the talented frontwoman Maddy Lee, boasting expansive vocal range and indefatigable onstage energy, and supported in no small part by dueling multi-instrumentalists Mike Murphy, on keyboard and tenor saxophone, and Jess Blum, on trumpet and keyboard, occasionally at the same time. Lee joked about how tired she was from running laps around the Bowl before people arrived at the show (just some buoyant, childlike fun with a friend) before making a serious, if lightheartedly delivered, point about how she was “sick of society’s standards for women and men.” From there, the band launched into “Not Your Way” off their 2015 album Not Your House, which they played like a Van Halen-style arena rock song even though it sounds closer to indie pop on record.
This song was one of Lee’s strongest vocally, as she belted lyrics like, “Not going to obey, to obey/This is my body, body/And you don’t have a say, have a say.” Earlier in the show, she spoke out against people who tell others to look or be a certain way, “to suck in our stomachs for photoshoots,” as well as a certain “racist, misogynist, homophobic coward” of an unnamed presidential candidate, quipping, “Love Trumps hate.”