Mannequin Pussy was initially poised to play a different venue when it first looked at booking a concert in Columbus, changing its plans when it learned the spot the band had in mind wouldn’t put its name on the marquee.
“I would love if you printed this. One of the venues in your town wouldn’t put ‘pussy’ on the marquee,” said singer Marisa Dabice, who will join drummer Kaleen Reading, bassist Colins Regisford and multi-instrumentalist Maxine Steen at a sold-out King of Clubs on Saturday, April 13. “We were going to play somewhere else, and they said, ‘Yo, we want the show, but we’re not going to put it on the marquee.’ And it was like, okay, then we’re not going to have our show here. … If you’re afraid to say the name, or to write it out for fear of whatever, then it’s probably a place we shouldn’t be playing.”
Now in its 14th year as a band, and on the heels of the career-best I Got Heaven, released in February, the Philadelphia four-piece runs into these types of hurdles less frequently these days, though these occurrences can still be a minor annoyance in those rare times they do arise. Regardless, Dabice declined to name the venue, preferring to remain “a little shady about it,” as she explained.
This runs counter to the approach the musicians take on I Got Heaven, a blunt, confident and sometimes hilariously profane record on which the bandmates hold absolutely nothing back, to the point where Dabice wonders aloud on one song what it would be like if “Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch.”
Desire remains a constant theme throughout, from “Sometimes,” on which Dabice casts herself as a giver (“I would give it all to you”), to “Loud Bark,” a song that straddles the line between seduction and threat. “I’ve got a loud bark, deep bite,” Dabice yelps as the music surges to a climax.
On past albums such as Patience, from 2019, Mannequin Pussy channeled its anger into brash, unrelenting punk rippers. I Got Heaven maintains this urgency but teases out new dimensions, the band fleshing out its sound with lush synths. Witness the title track, an alternately ferocious and gorgeous turn on which Dabice eviscerates religious hypocrisy.
The song is one of a handful on the album that includes religious imagery – a circumstance the singer described as a byproduct of “growing up in America.” “I grew up in a church, but it was actually very open minded and cool,” Dabice continued. “And then when I graduated out of the young adulthood bubble that I was in, I realized that is not the dominant experience of Christianity in our country.”
Elsewhere, the musicians experiment with song structure, upending “Split Me Open” with an early, extended bridge that lends added majesty to the tune's mid-song pivot while also creating space for the comparatively wordy verses crafted by Dabice. “Buddy, I had to fight for that structure, and I got it,” the singer said. “It was actually just a rare circumstance of having something I really wanted to say. If the song is full and there’s no need for any more words, usually I’m quick to say, ‘Okay, let’s cut something.’ But I think in that case I just really wanted to say it.”
The experimentation and willingness to play with form and structure benefited both from a new producer – the band recorded I Got Heaven alongside engineer John Congleton – and from getting out of Philadelphia for sessions for the first time. “Making a record where you go back to your house at night is a very, very different experience than going somewhere to make a record, where you’re together all the time,” said Dabice, who decamped with her bandmates to Los Angeles for album sessions. “You’re putting yourself in the act of it and truly living the record.”
Some of the album’s thematic push and pull, which surfaces in the ongoing tug between seduction and violence, could also be attributed to the Southern California setting, with Dabice casting LA as a “magical” but flawed place. “There’s so much beauty there,” she said. “But it’s also a very powerful place with a lot of harsh dichotomies.”
