Mannequin Pussy: “In some scenes there are expectations for bands to act and sound a certain way. We’ve always shunned that”

14 years into being a band, the members of Mannequin Pussy have spent more time than most staring out of the windows of a van. And what vocalist/guitarist Marisa Dabice has realised, shooting along motorways in the Rocky Mountains or the Scottish glens, is that the planet we live on — the one that our species has treated so terribly, has thrown under the bus in pursuit of profit and war and power — is the most beautiful place any of us could hope to be.

This revelation was part-inspiration for the name of the Philadelphia punk band’s new, fourth album, ‘I Got Heaven’. “I’m very fascinated by the idea of heaven, and how people live for this idea of what lies beyond,” Dabice says, speaking via Zoom alongside her bandmates — bassist/vocalist Colins ‘Bear’ Regisford, guitarist Maxine Steen and drummer Kaleen Reading. She was observing the conservative Christian hegemony in American culture — how it encourages people to dream of a better afterlife while treating the world and people around them cruelly. The album’s opening, title track (which NME named one of our songs of 2023 after it was released as a single) is a ferocious rebuke of religious hypocrisy and abuse in the verses, while on the blissful, dreamy chorus, Dabice coos, “I got heaven inside of me / I’m an angel, I was sent here to keep you company.” 

“If you were to spend just one day with your eyes fully open, you would see that the natural world which we coexist with, and our relationships to other people, are some of the most beautiful and enriching experiences we get to have in our lives,” Dabice says. “And this whole idea of what heaven is — how could it be anything other than what is already here?” On the album cover, Dabice kneels naked next to a pig, with a comforting hand on its side. “The very image is asking, are you the type of person that leads something to its slaughter or to safety?” Dabice explains. “And we would rather be shepherds of this place than its destructors.”

Since they formed as a sparky, snarly punk two-piece in 2010, Mannequin Pussy have been walking this balance between life-affirming resilience and righteous fury. They’re a band that excels at weaving the micro with the macro, suggesting we build the world we want to live in or don’t via our own interpersonal worlds; the ways we treat each other, want each other, or hurt each other.

On their last full-length album, the 2019 breakout hit ‘Patience’, Dabice tore apart the remnants of toxic relationships to uncover the strength and shortcomings they revealed. ‘I Got Heaven’, on the other hand, was born out of solitude. Dabice was thinking a lot about desire; the pull of wanting to truly know another person forms the gravity of the whole album. What does it mean to be happy alone, and still want someone? And what do we owe to ourselves and each other in the process?

“I think when you get into the vehicle of desire, it’s very possible that you’re gonna go off the cliff and be surrendered into a fiery pit of metal and flames,” Dabice laughs. “And I think when you spend a lot of time in your solitude, you start to see that energetic pull that other people coming into your orbit can have on you. You get much more particular about who you’re inviting into that very sacred space of your own body and energy and time.”

This is a different mindset to the more intense and desperate feelings in previous Mannequin Pussy albums, Dabice acknowledges. “Everyone in this band is in their 30s now, so we have this perspective of going through the very convoluted and confusing time that is your 20s. It’s a real trial and error. The people that come into your life and exit and leave those wounds on you that you’re left to lick up on your own… but you get better at it. You get better at navigating this whole place with experience.”

Across their last few records, the band have honed in on a sound that combines off-the-leash punk with sweet, serene dream-pop sensibilities. ‘I Got Heaven’ dives ever further into those ideas, as crisp, widescreen production meshes with biting guitar tones. It was recorded with John Congleton, who’s produced the likes of Blondie, St Vincent and Sleater-Kinney, and it was the first time the band had decamped to Los Angeles to spend several weeks thinking about nothing but making an album.

“Previously we’d always been practicing at respective homes, and life is still happening outside of it,” Regisford says. “Whereas with this album, we went into the studio for ten hours [every day] and then we would go to sleep. We could just be like, alright, we’re just gonna focus on each other and the music, and we’re not gonna walk away from that process.”

While on paper that sounds intense, there was a surprising lightness to the whole process. The band knew they were going to feel at ease from the first day, when Congleton asked them if they wanted to record with or without a metronome. They’d been imagining a big-time producer like Congleton as some kind of Whiplash-esque drill sergeant; but in fact, he was fully prepared to have fun, get adventurous, and embrace imperfections along with them.

“Something I’ve been saying a lot lately is that it’s called playing music, because it is a form of play that you are engaging in,” Dabice says. “It’s a practice in creativity and fun and in trying to imagine something before it’s even been fully realised. And John was like a wonderful playmate for this time.” Yet at the same time, she says, there’s a sense of appreciation and duty among the band for the role of their art in their lives. “You know, a lot of making a record is sitting and thinking. To be artists, and to have that space to have these conversations with each other about who we are and how we want to live each day, is an absolute privilege. Something we say a lot is bands are socialist experiments, because we’re all coming together as equals to create something.”

Shortly after our interview, the band ran into social media controversy with the release of an AI-assisted animated music video for the album track “Nothing Like”; criticism was largely based on the fact that real artists’ work is used without consent for AI training. ““AI Generated” is a dismissive & reductive term to what the music video actually is […] Real human hands and creativity went into creating this,” the band wrote on social media in response.

This summer, the band will be heading over to the UK and Europe; that’ll include a string of headline shows, plus appearances at Primavera Sound, Reading & Leeds, and the hardcore-punk juggernaut Outbreak Fest. Something Dabice has long said she’s proud of is that there isn’t just one type of Mannequin Pussy fan; at their shows you’ll see punks and indie kids, middle-aged lifers and fresh-faced teens, folks wanting to mosh and folks wanting to sway in their partner’s arms.

“Sometimes in certain scenes there’s these fucking punk uniforms, and there’s these expectations that everyone’s supposed to look the same and act the same. I think we’ve always kind of shunned that,” Dabice says. Instead, their open, curious, and tenaciously hopeful approach has firmly established Mannequin Pussy as one of alt rock’s most important bands right now. With ‘I Got Heaven’, they encourage us to think differently; what if heaven wasn’t a reward we earn, but something we work hard to build every minute?

Mannequin Pussy’s ‘I Got Heaven’ is out March 1 on Epitaph

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