Mannequin Pussy
I Got Heaven
EPITAPH
ABOVE THE CURRENT
At least as far back as their hardcore take on aughts-teen-movie power-pop, “Emotional High,” in 2016, Mannequin Pussy has been big on first impressions. After the album which that track appeared on bludgeoned listeners with under 20 minutes of bruising, messy noise-punk circling around a central self-love thesis riffing on our country’s Pledge of Allegiance, the band surprised its listeners with the first single from their next album taking the form of a spacious ballad running one quarter of the total length of Romantic. Even more unexpectedly, “Drunk II” saw vocalist Marisa Dabice swapping that throat-shredding confidence for deeply contemplative reflections on deeply personal relationship issues and behavioral patterns as her mostly composed singing voice assured us she isn’t quite as indestructible as her band’s previous two records may have led us to believe.
But as our expectations for Mannequin Pussy’s music continue to unravel, it’s this self-assuredness—even when singing about self-doubt or self-loathing—that seems to be the throughline. Our introduction to their latest album, I Got Heaven, arrived exactly half a year ago with what turned out to be the opening title track, which manages to both hone their hardcore instincts and mimic “Drunk II”’s ability to slowly grow on the listener over time (hence the six-month gap between lead single and album release?) as we dissect their first true hybrid recording of mad-dog punk and gently cooed lyricism. It almost feels like a caricature of the band at this point to hear Dabice sarcastically recite the line “What if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?” before questioning her own confidence and dipping into a softly song chorus gloating an inner beauty.
And from there the album manages to expand on their established sound in both directions—what follows is some of Mannequin Pussy’s most explosive music to date as well as some of their most nuanced. The second track only doubles down on the got-that-dog-in-them implications of the title track as it quickly picks up from moody, zoned-out post-punk to an explicit exhibition of bite being just as bad as bark. The most impressive track of the bunch might be “I Don’t Know You,” a hauntingly minimal riff on Feist’s one-time iPod jingle which, against all odds, manages to level up to a simmering grunge-guitar anthem as Dabice’s voice quavers to match the dialed-up heat. It isn’t long afterward that the band nearly reverts to their original form on the shouted call-and-response of punctuation-happy “OK? OK! OK? OK!,” even if 130 seconds feels epic by Romantic’s standards.
Rather than a continuation of the down-the-middle spiked indie rock of their 2021 Perfect EP (is that Dabice’s alter ego on the cover?), I Got Heaven feels equally geared toward fans who’ve been following the group since their Tiny Engines era and anyone who hopped on board after encountering the boundless fun that is the group’s recent Madchester rework of Dazy and Militarie Gun’s “Pressure Cooker.” If hardcore purists weren’t scared off by the pop-sanitized breakdown on the radio-ready “Nothing Like,” they probably won’t make it through the closer which, like that of Perfect, leans out of the tauntingly blasphemous end of the Mannequin Pussy spectrum and fully into the “ooh-ing softly” end. It’s right there in the title: they’ve got heaven inside them—fortunately they also still have enough hell to keep things interesting.
