Mannequin Pussy was unbridled sacrilege, defiant and rugged, teasing and contemplative. They took their audience to church, whipped them into a climactic frenzy, and left them on their knees.
I Got Heaven, the album facilitating the “I Got Heaven Tour,” was birthed from romantic divisions, alienation and heartbreak horniness undercutting sugary pop choruses and gritty punk tracks. Desire and a propensity for romantic entanglement guided frontwoman Marisa Dabice’s exposé on love and sin, peppered with brazed religious innuendos rejecting a stringent culture’s forced conformity.
However, before Mannequin Pussy could assume their apostle roles, Soul Glo, Mannequin Pussy’s hardcore supporting act, would voraciously disrupt the idle chit-chat floating through the Fonda with a gritty, energizing performance. Introduced by blaring airhorns, the band, consisting of vocalist Pierce Jordan, guitarist GG Guerra, and drummer TJ Stevenson, launched into a set of gratingly earthy riffs, fast drumming, and nasally, screamy vocalizations. With a setlist dominated by tracks off 2022’s Diaspora Problems, Jordan alternated between a rap-like cadence and brutally raspy screeches, hopping behind a synthesizer where he pounded out rhythms with a drumstick. A riled-up crowd bounced and pushed, singing along to Jordan’s angry tracks articulating disillusionment with anti-blackness, violence, and immorality, pausing in reverence as Jordan called for a ceasefire in Gaza. One of the singer’s more humorous breaks found him sprawled lazily on his side, proclaiming that at 31, “All my best years of rock and roll are behind me…” before launching into a sustained shriek.
Soul Glo was the perfect primer for Mannequin Pussy, an act who similarly channels their anger into genre-defying, unconventional sounds, provoking a response intrinsically connected with the physicality of movement; allowing the crowd to move in a release of their own design.
Soft yellow light made its way up Dabice’s billowing maxi-dress, illuminating a rose-adorned hemline as she whispered the gentle opening to “I Don’t Know You.” The breathy, somberly-subdued introduction was shattered as the dichotomous whine of Dabice’s guitar carried the song into rock-and-roll territory, Dabice stepping away from the mic, fully giving herself over to her guitar. To the ecstasy of the crowd, the favored “Sometimes” was played next, shouts erupting at the jangly opening riffs. My view was ephemerally obscured as curly heads bounded in and out of view, Dabice’s guttural shout “sometimes” setting off the first proper mosh of Mannequin Pussy’s set. Having abandoned the guitar, Dabice’s impassioned, thrashing dancing mirrored that of the crowd, and focus was readily shifted to her uniquely raw, effortlessly projected voice. Smart choices for an introduction, “I Don’t Know You” and “Sometimes” were manifestations of I Got Heaven’s contrasting sonic qualities, with the tracks both containing milder, brighter moments as well as the angrier, noisier moments the band is renowned for.
I indulged in Mannequin Pussy’s performance of “Patience” and “Drunk II,” tracks off 2019’s Patience which I first discovered around 2021. Dabice sang them for the brutal heartbreak anthems they are, whisking me back to Freshman year of college relating so fervently to Dabice’s lyricism: “but what if I don’t want to be [strong];” “I need to be alone.” Dabice vocalized a sentiment I had long since buried, and yet the empowerment in hearing a woman unabashedly vocalize her pain and frustration threatened to bring me to tears; Dabice became the liberation in rejecting inauthentic, yet hegemonic feminine pleasantness and politeness. Clearly my feelings were not isolated as they were evinced in impassioned novice screams from a crowd half thrashing, half swaying along to the moody tracks.
“I’m a waste of a woman/But I taste like success.” Those genius lyrics manifested as a crooning whisper in “Loud Bark,” a climatic track off I Got Heaven which, In an interview with Pitchfork, Dabice posited as a response to an older generation: “they need our generation to choose all the same things and not to ask any questions of the way that the world is.” With multiple repetitions of “loud, bark, teeth, bite,” Dabice gradually reaches a scream, though at the Fonda, the song required she first veritably hypnotize her makeshift chorus of fans into “giving [her] a little taste” of “bite;” filling out the song in the absence of the “20 voices” present on the record. It was all too easy to give in to Dabice’s sultry request, though our attempts to recreate her perfected, gritty scream fell far short.
Dabice stormed across the stage, a Victorian silhouette gathering her skirts around her as she stomped and swayed to I Got Heaven’s title track, “I Got Heaven.” In a tracklist detailing the intricacies of the cardinal sin, lust, “I Got Heaven” rejects the sanctimonious concept “love thy neighbor,” demanding a cessation in the blind retelling of ancient narratives. “This song goes out to anyone who’s ever made you feel ashamed for who you are…I have no respect for religion that doesn’t respect everybody!” In the context of a crowd teeming with openly queer individuals and couples, “I Got Heaven” transcended the title of “song.” It was the crowd’s new testament, Dabice’s impassioned shouts, bellowed from her knees, the answer to frustrations of those victimized by religious norms.
Soon after, a hush permeated the Fonda, an ode to Dabice’s unshakeable presence, commanding even when in recess from an inspired performance. On the contrary, Dabice opted to encourage her “sweet little babies” to “take a second to breathe.” Halting the upward-trending momentum in increasingly hardcore songs, Dabice gently lectured the crowd on anger, rejecting the idea that “anger is something infantilizing…[something] that you’ll grow out of:” “We stand here as a reflection of what it is you feel…as proof that you’re not crazy.”
Reset, and ready once again to diffuse that communal sense of anger, Mannequin Pussy delivered their hardest songs to a primed crowd, who gratefully flung themselves on top of one another in short-lived crowd surf attempts, jumping in time to the breakneck tracks “Of her,” “Aching,” and “Ok Ok Ok.” Characterized by simple distorted riffs and more screaming than singing, the band, with a sense of finality, embraced a truly raw, punk sound.
Mannequin Pussy’s encore, consisting of “Pigs is Pigs” off 2021’s Perfect, “Emotional High” and “Romantic” (both off Romantic (2016)) explored the full spectrum of their pop to punk sound. The fast-paced “Pigs is Pigs” put bassist and supporting vocalist Colins “Bear” Regisford, at the forefront of the noisy track, where he effortlessly adapted Dabice’s punk precedent. “Emotional High” was bubbly, almost ‘90s-pop, forefronting Dabice who smiled her way through the track. Rounding out the night was “Romantic:” a Mannequin Pussy classic the crowd had palpably been waiting for. Though lyrically scant, the screamy song became Dabice’s intimate recollection of a relationship with an unpredictable partner, the vexation that accompanied inconsistency shared candidly with a responsive crowd.
Throats raw, feet sore, Mannequin Pussy’s exit left fans battling the dichotomous sentiments of emptiness and fulfillment; emptiness from the pent-up anger that had been coaxed into a release, fulfillment in witnessing such a powerful, satisfying display of showmanship. Dabice was sensational, the epitome of power and ownership onstage, and it was truly a privilege to witness the greatness of I Got Heaven in person.
