If you see Molly Lewis at a soiree and ask her to whistle a tune, she’ll probably decline. After a martini her game can be off – just as you might have slurred when making the request.
Generally she’s not precious. “As long as I can breathe, I can whistle,” Lewis says with an ever-present smile. “I knew this whistler who wouldn’t kiss his wife two weeks before a competition. I think kissing is beneficial, actually. It strengthens the lips.”
When you don’t write lyrics, this is the alternative analysis one must endure.
Sydney-born, Los Angeles-based Lewis has carved out an enviable career as a professional whistler, living a life most surreal. Her lips her preferred instrument, she has become an in-demand collaborator since entering competitive whistling in 2012. She has worked with Dr Dre, Karen O and Mac DeMarco; the New Yorker described her talent as “part Snow White communing with the birds, part haunted theremin”. She’s been flown to New York to guest on the Barbie soundtrack with Mark Ronson; to Shanghai for an art show hosted by Gucci; and to Cannes film festival courtesy of Chanel. To avoid unnecessary confusion at customs, she’s put “musician” on her passport.
Now, she’s releasing a long-awaited debut album, On the Lips, a deft odyssey through exotica, jazz clubs, bossa nova beats and Italian cinema powered by the pathos of Lewis’ whistling.
“I do feel very lucky that I’ve cornered the market,” Lewis says. “I’m very competitive and I found the one thing where I don’t have to compete with many others. If people want a whistler they usually call me.”
Lewis’ persona may be shrouded with velvet but, when we talk, she’s dressed casually.
“I love that era but it’s not something I bring to every aspect of my life,” she says of 50s and 60s references threaded throughout her work. “I don’t want to be someone that’s cosplaying a version of the past.”
Her attention to detail is immaculate. In the video for her single Lounge Lizard, she’s a glamorous apparition on a spiral staircase. Her Cary Grant-esque co-star – who gamely simulates a sax solo – is a nod to her love of Hitchcock.
Growing up, Lewis taught herself the soundtrack to the noir classic, Laura, on the piano. She played equally close attention to the lonesome cowboy whistling of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores. Being raised by filmmaker parents with a quirky sense of humour gave her an appreciation of mood and kitsch.
Lewis lived in LA till she was 13, when her family moved to Mullumbimby, a town in New South Wales’ northern rivers that attracts folk with alternative lifestyles. It’s a culture shock she came to love. “It’s home,” she says, “but I don’t think I could have a whistling career there. I could maybe duet with buskers outside the newsagent.”
As a teenager, Lewis saw the 2005 documentary Pucker Up, which follows competitors including an investment banker, a social worker and a turkey hauler as they compete at the International Whistlers Convention. Lewis realised that her own whistling prowess stacked up.
“I’ve always been interested in strange subcultures,” she says. “I thought it was hilarious and fun, and I knew that it would be an experience to go there, anthropologically.”
Her father, the documentarian Mark Lewis, promised if she passed the audition, he’d take her to compete in Louisburg, North Carolina. He’d already given Lewis her first professional gig, whistling on the soundtrack to his 2010 documentary Cane Toads: The Conquest. The music was supervised, as ever, by Lewis’ mother, Rhyl.
When, in 2012, Lewis did qualify, she and her father met in Florida, bought a car and embarked on a three-month road trip, with the competition as the first stop. She didn’t win on this occasion, but would triumph in later years.
“People were bringing their best technical skills and doing Flight of the Bumblebee, which is cool,” she says. “But I want whistling to be heard in a beautiful way. I want it to be otherworldly.”
After studying film history and theory at university, Lewis moved to Berlin with her then-boyfriend and eventually wound up back in LA. It was there that she won a trophy in the Masters of Whistling competition in 2015. Last year, she came second place in the all-round category.
“At my first competition, the median age was ‘dead’,” she says. “I’m joking, but it wasn’t really a young person’s game. Then the last competition that I went to in LA a few months back, the crowd was a lot younger.”
Has Lewis has been a key driver of this demographic swing?
“Gosh, wow, I don’t know about that,” she says. “I mean, it’s possible.”
After a decade in LA haunting the Hollywood lounge bars and forging ties with like-minded retronauts, Lewis is planning to move to New York, to soak up the jazz clubs. Wherever she plays, Café Molly is the conceptual lounge pop-up she creates.
“Until I have my own red velvet sunken piano lounge, I take it with me,” she says. “Hey, if there are any investors interested in a foolproof plan to make tons of money on a whistle club, get in touch.”
On the Lips by Molly Lewis is out now through Jagjaguwar
