Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
On I Got Heaven, Mannequin Pussy's universal howl looks for a split in the darkness
How can we be tender when the world is a threat? For Mannequin Pussy, feeling threatened manifests as 'a dog without a leash' which is 'growling at a stranger' and 'biting at their knees'. Even the most placid animal will turn vicious when encountering danger at every turn. On I Got Heaven, the band’s universal howl looks for a split in the darkness.
That animal can also mean release – as the band’s unstoppable frontwoman Marisa Dabice yelped on their 2021 song Control, 'What I need is just one real bitch to set me free'. Conveying that through the rush of soft loud dynamics is something Mannequin Pussy excel at. It’s exhilarating to hear a band of DIY origins refuse to dilute themselves this far into their career. That’s in the sheer gall to sing a line like, 'And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?' on a first single, or the simple incisiveness of: 'I want to be a danger, I want to be adored, I want to walk around at night while being ignored'.
Dabice’s voice is an unending cavern that stretches and shapeshifts. It’s also in their throat-wrecking rapid fire hardcore – there’s that animal again, 'a loud bark, deep bite' – that punctuates their canny ability at shimmering pop. Is there a better band applying pop sensibilities to heavy music? Here they extend their toolkit with the loungey dreampop of I Don’t Know You and the skittering drum machine pattern in Nothing Like.
The band’s excellent 2019 record Patience was full of self-flagellation, guttural outpouring and railing against abuse and injustice, but it ended on the hopeful budding of new love, a journey of breakdown and renewal. They continue on this record to wrap up extreme emotion in sonic confection, but in the meantime things have got worse. At a humid show at Glasgow venue Broadcast in 2022, just after the US Supreme Court rolled back abortion rights made precedent by Roe v. Wade, Dabice led the crowd in a seismic scream of pain, a call for resistance cut by a sense of hopelessness. That has lingered. On OK! OK! OK! OK!, Colins 'Bear’ Regisford shouts over crushing bass: 'Fuck a future, I don’t see it'. I Got Heaven ends with yearning and a desire for tenderness touched by the realisation that the world never quite lets you sink your teeth into it.
Listen to: Loud Bark, Nothing Like, Split Me Open