Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven
(Epitaph)
“Oh, what’s wrong with dreaming of burning it all down?” sings Marisa “Missy” Dabice on “Nothing Like,” as a heavily phased guitar breakdown cascades around her. That the line arrives at the climax of one of Mannequin Pussy’s horniest songs perhaps tells its own story; on their fourth album, I Got Heaven, the band unites the personal and the political more than ever, threading anarchist fantasies through songs of breathless longing.
Musically, however, Mannequin Pussy are working at the widest sonic polarities of their 14-year career. The 90-second punk brawls are more caustic than ever (“Aching”), while the softer moments have been stretched to their own logical endpoint, occasionally veering into the kind of respectable indie-folk that might have soundtracked an iPod mini commercial 20 years ago (“I Don’t Know You”). At the occasional intersections of the two, it’s breathtaking.
It makes sense that this album is arguably less diaristic than its predecessor, 2019’s Patience—Dabice has noted that this was their most collaborative, full-band writing process. But in shifting the lyrical focus away from one songwriter’s experience—exemplified by the previous hyper-emotional adrenaline rushes of “Drunk II” and “In Love Again”—some of the lovelorn charisma that made Mannequin Pussy so special has been lost. Nonetheless, the record’s disparate strands mostly hold together, a formidable document of their fire and fury—and one that’s needed more than ever. – GRADE: B+
You can check out I Got Heaven at Bandcamp and elsewhere.
