There is something particularly satisfying about art that is made entirely on the artist’s own terms, never wavering in its voice, honest and incorrupt and genuine to the bone. And then make that art really
fucking good, too, almost objectively good, like any reasonable person
should like this. The result is a collision between the intent and the
work creating an almost otherworldly blast that can’t help but draw an
audience. That’s heaven right there. Mannequin Pussy is the most
exciting band in America and this album might make it a star despite
itself, the NSFW name, the hardcore embrace.
Now 14 years and 4 albums in and with a new guitarist, but an old
collaborator, adding also a judicious use of synths, the band sounds
completely locked in as a single organism. The rhythm section is tight as always. The songwriting is adept. Orchestrating the finely controlled chaos is Marisa Dabice like a benevolent but dangerous feral queen.
She is nude in the glowing twilight on the album cover, gesturing “after you” to her regal escort, a giant hog. It is an apt visual representation of the band aesthetic. It’s celestial and in the muck, both. The album is perfect in form: 10 songs, 30 minutes flat, like God
intended. The opener and first single ‘I Got Heaven’ is a tuneful rager,
one of the band’s best songs yet. Sure, there’s the lyric imagining
cunnilingus with Christ, maybe don’t play it for your parents on Easter,
but the song is…beautiful. Beautiful is, maybe counterintuitively, the
most accurate single adjective to describe the first five songs, including the moody, softer ‘I Don’t Know You’ (I didn’t know that Kaleen Reading, the excellent drummer, owned brushes!) and finishing with the lilting, then roaring, ‘Sometimes.’
But, just when you’re thinking, maybe my friend who likes Caroline
Polachek a little too much might even dig this music and we can maybe give a little spark to a dull relationship, this is the sort of band who interrupts that thought with, ah hell we’re doing three hardcore songs in the last five. And, they are phenomenal entries in the genre,
especially ‘OK?OK!OK?OK!’ with its call and response vocals and half
tempo stomp coda. Mixed in are the catchy ‘Softly” and the soaring
closer, ‘Split Me in Two.’
Dabice is a badass. And these songs are mostly about being a badass
and being horny while remaining a badass. ‘I’m a waste of a woman,
but I taste like success/I keep all of my sugar where I know you like it
best’ (‘Loud Bark’) ‘Split me open/Pour your love in me.’ But, this isn’t
Def Leppard. Dabice has a yearning for connection that is matched by
ambivalence towards romance as when she reluctantly stiff arms a
pleading lover in the stellar ‘Softly.’ She has shit to do. Like dancing
around a farm naked and whipping a mosh pit into a froth.
We like to talk about the “confidence” of bands. This band has it in
spades. You get the feeling it is doing exactly what it wants to do how it wants to do it. If there were any doubt, it takes some steely backbone to tour with Soul Glo as your support. The crowd is going to be wrung out before the headliner even hits the stage. But, Mannequin Pussy has you right where they want you. If that bill is not going to be the liveshow of the year, I can’t wait to find out what is.
‘And what if I was confident/Would you just hate me more?’ (‘I Got
Heaven’). Oh, you may not love us, but we love you.
Words by Rick Larson
Picky Bastards 