Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa Dabice: “Shame is the ultimate tool of oppressors”
After a five-year hiatus, Mannequin Pussy has made a triumphant return with their latest album, I Got Heaven. While such an extended gap between studio releases often results in artists fading from relevance, this is certainly not the case for the Philadelphia punks. In fact, their latest effort stands as their crowning achievement thus far. Although they remain true to their roots, the band exudes a newfound boldness, secure in the knowledge that their craft remains as resonant as ever. I Got Heaven covers a wide range of emotions, from love to politics, while maintaining a sense of coherence throughout. Perfect for the postmodern era, where boundaries are blurred and emotions run high, the album solidifies Mannequin Pussy’s place in contemporary music.
There’s no surprise, then, that leader and frontwoman Marisa Dabice believes Mannequin Pussy’s fourth album is indeed their finest to date. Fittingly, March 1st, the release day, marks a full-circle moment for the group because it was on that exact day a year ago that they entered the studio with John Congleton to start recording their masterpiece.
The group is so confident in I Got Heaven that Dabice admits it’s somewhat of a challenge to perform their older tracks, knowing they have such a powerful album waiting to be unleashed. This isn’t to downplay the significance of their previous work, which made them contemporary favourites; rather, it speaks to the sheer depth and impact of their latest music. As the quartet eagerly anticipates hitting the road, Dabice expresses her “extraordinary excitement” to perform the new material live and share that fresh creative space with fans.
It’s not surprising that I Got Heaven represents the most refined version of Mannequin Pussy, as the band adopted a different approach when crafting the record. Unlike previous albums, this project was primarily a collaborative effort and not solely the brainchild of Dabice. Additionally, several aspects distinguish the record as “really different” from their past releases. One notable distinction is the speed at which it was written; while older albums took years to complete, I Got Heaven was produced swiftly, resulting in a larger volume of material to record. Another key difference lies in the creative process. For the first time, the band embarked on “writing retreats” to ignite creativity, travelling to LA twice to collaborate with acclaimed producer John Congleton and explore new sounds and ideas.
Working so closely with Congleton was also significant for the group as it was the first time they were involved with a producer in pre-production, which proved to be a match made in heaven. “What an absolute gem of a weirdo,” Dabice says of him, “He’s a weirdo, just like the rest of us. It was just such a great environment every day.”
Following the sessions at the end of last year, the band produced 17 tracks. After such an immensely creative time, they returned to their homes in Philadelphia, and it was in this downtime that they started digging deeper into the direction of Mannequin Pussy. The members individually graded each song, taking time to listen and then scoring them with “An A, a B with potential to be A, just a B or ‘This is trash and we don’t even have to work on it.'”
Dabice, bassist Colins ‘Bear’ Regisford, guitarist/synth player Maxine Steen and drummer Kaleen Reading all forensically analysed what would become I Got Heaven. This produced a moment when the stars fully aligned, following their fervent collaborations in California. “When we came to practice to get together to talk about it, we compared our lists,” Dabice recalls. “Everyone’s were pretty much identical. It was obvious what everyone felt creatively inspired to work on”.
Despite the range of sonics found on I Got Heaven, including alt-rock, sweeping shoegaze textures, dance beats and straight-up hardcore punk, the quartet worked in harmony until the end. Regarding the band’s punk roots remaining amid a refined sound, Dabice maintains: “Even though we’re maturing in the way that we express our emotions in new ways, there’s still something so cathartically powerful about a minute-30 hardcore song that gives you space just to scream.”
After discussing Mannequin Pussy’s inherent punk rage, the political themes of I Got Heaven also come into focus, particularly with the critical examination of Christianity in the resounding title track. However, the album’s political framework is more nuanced than a simple black-and-white characterisation. To elucidate this complexity, Dabice shared some poignant insights into what it means to be a progressive American in a band that serves as both a creative outlet and a safe space.
“By virtue of our identities, things will always be seen through a political lens. Sometimes, making music that is not inherently critical of the state and the systems we live under is inescapable,” she said. “Especially for Americans, every day, we’re faced with the reality of the atrocities that our government commits. It’s also an increasingly violent time in the United States to be anything other than the way that society demands you be. That’s something we’re all attuned to. And so, there’s definitely a lot of songs that wrestle with and attack some of those ideas. It’s a safe place for us to criticise and to call out because it’s our art, and we’re allowed to say whatever we want in that space”.
Regarding the critique of the pervasive and contemptible influence of Christianity in America, ‘I Got Heaven’ is both a personal and a more generalised comment on it.
“All of us in the band have come up against judgement from people who call themselves Christians, who say what we do is obscene, and it’s not real art, and we should be ashamed of the people that we are,” Dabice starts before delivering a haymaker to a bigot’s jaw. “Shame is the ultimate tool that oppressors use to get you to acquiesce to their desire of how you should be. If someone can make you ashamed of who you are, then ultimately, they’ve won.”
I Got Heaven is not only the most accomplished body of work Mannequin Pussy has released, but it’s also an incredibly unrelenting form of sonic resistance. I told Dabice that I read the title track’s lyrics, isolated from the music, which ranges from almost catatonic rage in the verses to intense transcendence in the chorus, and was taken aback by their force on their own. While it is easy to perceive the general angle when listening, it’s only when inspecting the lyrics that you realise just how essential they are.
Despite the severity of some of the album’s themes, Dabice’s dark comedy courses throughout the record, a line she has always excelled at toeing. Just now, she and the band have made things closer to the bone than ever. This provides a compelling counterpoint to the familiar aspects that they do so well.
“There’s a lot of jokes all over the record, um… I think I’m funny,” she enunciates, producing a self-assured grin. “I’m putting my own humour, which is often dark, critical, or perverted, into the songs. I get excited when I come up with a good joke that’s joking but serious. It’s often funny because it’s serious.”
A reflection of this innate balance of opposites is how the cover of I Got Heaven materialised, which features Dabice clutching a pig. Setting the scene, she says the group had been touring a lot before starting work on the record. “I won’t mince words,” she adds, “There was one tour in particular where everyone was just so horny and constantly making jokes about being lonely on the road.”
This lascivious collective vibe would make its way into the group chat, with one particular meme standing out: a skull on a motorcycle, plucked from the pictorial subculture of “cranking my hog”. During this period of raised blood pressure, the group were “constantly making jokes about pulling pork and cranking hog,” which may have been a touch perverted, but they were fun. It’s how they do things. They’re called Mannequin Pussy, after all.
Then, when entering the studio for the first day of the sessions, Congleton dubbed the group his “little slam piggies”, which immediately provoked a round of laughter because it echoed their humour despite being the first time meeting the producer. It might have been a litmus test on his part, but it broke the ice perfectly. Sharing the same wicked humour, Congleton soon earned the name “Hogfather”.
This weird version of Charlie’s Angels would become a strange familial setting and provide a route into much weightier conversations about the “general relationship between human beings and pigs,” which is “such a violent one”.
Dabice explains that humans are far from kind to nature. This leads her to the point of the cover and, most importantly, the record’s underlying theme. “So, when we were making the album cover, the question was, ‘What kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to be the type of person who leads someone to their safety? Or are you the type of person who leads someone to their slaughter?'”
Despite the profound messaging, to think it started with a couple of jokes about cranking hog is Mannequin Pussy and I Got Heaven to a tee. They’re a paradox: Absolutely righteous and utterly brazen. Dabice concludes: “That’s the way our mind works. We’re a bit perverted, but then we keep going with a bit, and it becomes overly intellectual.”
