Mannequin Pussy’s spiritual break

Marisa “Missy” Dabice spends her days at home chasing serotonin. After becoming an “intense hermit” during lockdown, Dabice discovered that there are just three sure-fire methods of acquiring the body’s natural mood booster: exercise, cooking, and talking face-to-face with another person. “How hard are those three things to fit into a day when your energy is a resource for others?” she asks, ticking off the latter from her to-do list over a full English breakfast in a south London cafe.

That idea of protecting your energy and prioritizing how to spend it informs much of I Got Heaven, the excellent new album from Dabice’s ferocious and quietly tender punk band Mannequin Pussy. It’s a collection of songs that rage and soothe in equal measure, written by a band in their 30s as they reflect on young adulthood from a grown-up perspective. Dabice, who is joined in the Philly-based band by drummer Kaleen Reading, bassist Colin “Bear” Regisford, and multi-instrumentalist Maxine Steen, says the first impetus for the album came two years ago following a break-up. “I realized I’d been in a relationship for the whole of my adult life,” she says with dread. “I’d always been someone’s girlfriend. It was horrifying.” After thinking about what she had sacrificed, Dabice made “a real commitment” to being alone.

Mannequin Pussy build the bulk of I Got Heaven around a suite of songs about adapting to this life of independence and autonomy, both the free-spirited nature of only answering to yourself as well as the thirst and desire that can come with being alone.

“I Don’t Know You” is one of the band’s prettiest moments to date, a song that captures how a headrush of feelings can knock even the steadiest person sideways. “I know a lot of things, but I don’t know you,” Dabice sings, distilling the allure of someone new into a simple idea. The gritty and muscular “Sometimes” acts as a straightener, with Dabice chastising herself for playing with fire and catching those feelings. Album closer “Split Me Open,” meanwhile, is more explicit in its desires: “My body’s a temple / It was built for you / To do all the things you dreamed you do,” she sings before the record comes to a climactic denouement with the band chanting, “Nothing’s going to change!” It feels less like an admission of defeat than a reckoning with one’s inner self.

“You meet people in such a casual but intensely emotional way,” she explains, saying some of the songs were written after a random encounter with another musician at a festival. “You just see them that one time and nothing happens but it’s so nice to meet someone who understands you and your situation. How often do we have that connection that feels exciting?”

Dabice points to “societal pressure, emotional pressure, personal pressure” for not spending time alone sooner. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the band’s renewed creative energy arrived when she dedicated her life entirely to music and her bandmates. A line on “Loud Bark” — “I’m a waste of a woman, but I taste like success” — acts as a middle finger to anyone who thinks sidestepping conventional life plans represents failure. Bucking conventions and choosing an unorthodox route works for Mannequin Pussy, a band whose rebellious spirit and heart-on-sleeve emotions have always existed symbiotically.

Since they released their self-titled debut in 2014, Mannequin Pussy have always embraced their spiky and confrontational side. From their band name, which continues to make prudes squirm and led to a TikTok shadowban, to songs like the masterful “Drunk II,” a highlight of 2019’s Patience that paints an unflattering image of how alcohol can lubricate the wheels of a toxic relationship.

I Got Heaven locks its crosshairs on a bigger target: the Church. The album’s title track focuses on religion’s use as a smokescreen in America by those who police the bodies and futures of others. Combating a Supreme Court seemingly hell-bent on rewinding abortion and LGBTQ rights, Mannequin Pussy choose righteous profanity as Dabice sings, “What if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?” Later on, she sums up the impossible standards women face when she asks, “And what if I’m an angel? Oh what if I’m a bore? And what if I was confident would you just hate me more?”

Far-right Christian theology may be poisoning the well of the American government, but Dabice points to her own experience as evidence of how religion can be used as a force for good. Like her parents, Dabice was raised Catholic; she was taken out of the church, she says, when she was old enough to understand words like “shame.” Growing up in Westport, Connecticut, she began attending a Christian church and going on humanitarian trips aimed at helping others. “Everything about the practice was about serving the people around you, especially those who have less than you,” she remembers. “It wasn’t about singing some hymns and throwing money into a basket.” She points to the rise of the megachurch as a symptom of an unwell system and adds: “America likes things to be as big as possible and churches are no different. Capitalism is the real true religion of America.”

As safety nets dissolve and the cost of living skyrockets, a worker’s individual profit margin needs to be higher and higher just to ensure their very survival. This developing financial reality is at odds with certain punk traditions concerning the accumulation of money from art, and it’s something more and more bands have had to confront. Dabice says she makes enough from the band to pay her bills, though a recent Rolling Stone profile explained how drummer Kaleen Reading was working as a public safety officer at a boarding school, while Regisford and Steen both take shifts at a moving company between tours. Dabice says she feels “incredibly privileged” to be in her current position and is fully aware it may not last forever.

“This is a path I have chosen and something that I feel I have to commit to,” she explains. “It is something that you can choose for yourself but it is not something that you can choose to make a living off of.” She maintains that it “is possible to be a working-class musician at certain levels,” however, the expenses attached to touring in particular are making that increasingly difficult. “Being in a band is a socialist endeavor,” she says to underline her point. “It’s a group of people making the same sacrifices and commitments. So whatever money we make we’re splitting it equally amongst the band. That’s not normal in a capitalist society. There’s supposed to be somebody getting fucked over.”

Dabice draws parallels between church and performing live, saying that shows can be “like a service where the songs are the hymns.” Mannequin Pussy are a religion to a hardcore few and the band are keenly aware of the opportunity they provide night after night as grueling tours snake their way from one grungy venue to another. “There’s a real beauty in people seeking out community and that’s why people find themselves at shows,” Dabice says. “We want to find a way to come to terms with our emotions. We’re not looking to exert dominance or power over people, we’re inviting others in to find a moment of catharsis in a world that makes it very hard to do so.”

Mannequin Pussy’s flock is in position to grow exponentially. The band’s profile has risen since Patience was released five years ago and I Got Heaven has the feel of an album that could take the band onto the next level, whether that may be mass critical-acclaim or simply quitting those jobs at the moving company. “We’re putting so much in and sharing so much — it’s intended to be received,” Dabice says, welcoming the bigger venues and increasing streaming numbers.

She recalls the early days of the band when all there was to focus on was “getting on stage in Brooklyn and screaming.” I Got Heaven is an album that recognizes the beauty in growing from that stage of life and appreciating the vantage point the band has spent a decade climbing to reach. “We malign nature in such an exquisite way but my life has only gotten better since I turned 30,” she says. “We convince people the best years of their lives are in their 20s but that’s absolute fucking bullshit. It’s so glorious to grow older and see yourself get better at something.”