Philly punks Mannequin Pussy are at the end of an era – namely, one that has culminated in the resounding success of their most recent LP, I Got Heaven. While released in 2024, it was recorded a year prior – and both ‘24 and ‘25 have found them touring it quite relentlessly, bolstered by well-earned adoration from both critics and the public. MP’s stop at a very-much sold-out Fete Ballroom in Providence comes as part of a sort of nesting doll of tours – they’ve tagged in the excellent Gouge Away as that band does their own shows, and MP themselves will are in the midst of supporting the likes of Turnstile, including a date on September 20th at Suffolk Downs in East Boston.
We here at Music Madness have covered MP no less than two distinct times prior to now – all within this era. If you’ve been paying attention – and you ought to have been – you know the songs, so to rehash each would be nothing but an exercise in regurgitation. The players are, as usual: frontwoman Missy Dabice and guitar/synth player Maxine Steen flexing their impeccable senses of fashion; bassist Bear Regisford crowned with dreadlocks that move and whirl as he does when swinging the headstock of his mighty bass; drummer Kaleen Reading in her trademark red jumpsuit; and touring multi-instrumentalist Carolyn Haynes behind both synths and the veneer of some chic red sunglasses.
Even despite this well-honed familiarity, it’s fascinating to witness the final form of this era of the band – particularly because they elect to concentrate the songs from I Got Heaven in the earlier part of their set. Prior to ‘I Don’t Know You’, Dabice half-jokes with her characteristically-wide smile: “We only have one more of these pop songs”. It’s hardly self-effacing – I Got Heaven is MP at their best and most diverse in terms of songwriting, but in the live setting there’s clearly a yearning, on both sides of the stage, to cut loose and look back a bit into the realm of more raw compositions – and they are happy to oblige. The transition point is ‘Loud Bark’, an IGH cut that has proven to be one of the band’s most enduring and beloved statements. The title is half of the refrain: “I’ve got a loud bark, deep bite”, which is liable to go down as one of the best single lines penned this decade (even immortalized in all sorts of fan art), and a pure distillation of the band’s essence. It inverts the classic trope of “all bark, no bite” into something far more substantive – the bark is no longer bluster, it’s a warning – a forecast of how deep those metaphorical incisors could actually go.
At this moment in the set Dabice asks the audience in a lull between songs: “Where are the boys?” asking them to raise their hands. “There’s a lot more of you than usual,” she notes, but as has become a trend in my MP show attendance, this is anything but a flippant comment. What Missy says between songs is just as compelling as anything she or her bandmates put into lyrics – many bands opt for light-hearted banter between tunes, which is understandable and potentially illuminating in its own right, but Mannequin Pussy make pointed use of every breath, in song or not. She continues: “I am deeply concerned about men in this country,” she begins, before turning to the powers that be: “They are trying every single day for years to push upon us… the idea of a gender war that exists between us…” I can’t take down everything she says fast enough, but broadly she speaks in service of the idea that people sow division among us – be it between race, gender, sex, etc. because those same people are very afraid of what we might make if we set that all aside, stopped playing their manufactured game, and worked together.
With especial emphasis, addressing a label often foisted upon her/the band by sects of both fans and detractors, she says definitively: “I am not a misandrist. I love men. I think men can be wonderful – I wish they could learn to love themselves and the people around them…” It’s moving, not just for the contribution to the ages-old effort to get men to believe that actually talking about their feelings is good, but she also outright rejects the idea that she or the band subscribe to some philosophy that excludes men, or anyone. Coming to her conclusion: “They are trying to divide us with something as simple as empathy,” – Dabice says, and it’s true – we’ve entered an era where something as basic as empathy is reduced to some superfluous concept only able to make a person weak and effete. “Conservative and traditional values…” she muses, in the tone she’s been using so far, intentionally reserved and airy. But then all of a sudden she’s LOUD. “IT’S SO. FUCKING. BORING!” she screams, and the crowd erupts in kind.
All this serves as the grand intro to ‘Loud Bark’, and in its wake the sound, the lyrics, the movement of the crowd, all hit harder, infused with an extra burst of energy. When it concludes, she has one final sentiment with which to wrap the experience: “Your rage sounds so beautiful together.” Giving the title track of I Got Heaven a sendoff, the set becomes a whirlwind of shorter, hard-hitting punk songs cycling across almost all their releases: the newer avalanche of ‘Aching’ to ‘Everything’ from 2016’s Romantic, songs start clocking in around 90 seconds a pop here, melding into one another, not much room for relaxation – but they do work in one final lull before ‘Clams’. It’s just Dabice and Steen onstage for a moment backed by a low, slow pulse emanating from the latter’s synth, Missy talking about anger and rage, culminating in what has become a tradition for the band: one big scream from the entire crowd at once.
‘OK? OK! OK? OK!’ spotlights Regisford in the vocal role, as does the ensuing ‘Pigs is Pigs’, with Dabice taking over bass duties so he can cut loose front-and-center. Coming to the final pair of tunes, ‘Emotional High’ and the much-awaited ‘Romantic’, Missy commemorates once again the I Got Heaven era, and despite having said that the band will be taking a break for an unspecified amount of time once their current commitments are done, she can’t help but tack on a hint: “It’s time to write some new music!” It’s good news for the future, but for the final five minutes of the show there’s only the Now, packed tight in that sweaty ballroom, absorbing the music rapturously in its tamer moments and colliding inwards when, like everything does eventually, it explodes.
Coming together at a punk show is like harnessing that rage – bringing it out under controlled circumstances, grouping it up, and centrifuging it in a circle pit in the hopes of making something truly beautiful. Something that can be more than just a fun evening (though that’s important too). Something that inspires the kind of community, creativity, and action that practices the embattled art of marrying empathy and strength.
Photos and words by Collin Heroux