At a sold-out Academy 2, the room is crammed in every corner from young punks with mohawks to older men here for the critical hype. The excitement is palpable, with exuberant cheers as bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford and lead guitarist Maxine Steen step out to soundcheck. The feeling in the room is joy: this is a collective of people united by the music of Mannequin Pussy and their message, the desire to enjoy themselves in a space that is safe and completely for them.
At the strike of nine they take the stage, lead singer Marisa “Missy” Dabice slinking on stage to NLE Choppa’s “SLUT ME OUT 2”. They burst into new-album favourite Sometimes, and the crowd parts all the way to the back; a sea of flailing limbs and dyed hair. Combining the sultry with the soft, they ease into ‘Nothing Like’ and ‘Softly’, dreamy pop anthems of yearning and lust reminiscent of Wolf Alice. Pastel rainbow lights cloud the stage, the band glowing beneath them.
The set is plagued by technical difficulties (“Fuck Fender amps” – declares Missy with a giggle) but is weathered expertly, instead segueing into the band’s mission statements. Forever a band to wear their heart on their sleeves, tonight is no different and Missy invites all the men in the room to shout “Pussy!” before inviting the rest of the room to join, inviting all voices to the table. She croons into the mic with a Marilyn Monroe breathlessness, whispering the supposedly bad word before growling with an intensity that gets stuck on Academy 2’s gummy floors. This antithesis perfectly encapsulates the world of Mannequin Pussy – the soft with the harsh, the fierce with the gentle, the love with the anger. It is a world that embraces all parts, and finds the beauty within all of it.
Then is the angry part of the set: after cutting songs due to amp issues the band launch into the heavier offerings from ‘I Got Heaven’, with tracks like ‘Of Her’ and ‘Aching’ embracing their hardcore side, featuring sludgy breakdowns and animalistic screams of rage. Bear takes the mic for track ‘Pigs is Pigs’, protesting against police violence in the U.S and this sentiment is echoed later through Missy, who on behalf of the band condemns the U.S and its actions. In earlier tracks like ‘Control’, they seem to reference an era of punk that for so long erased the voices of Mannequin Pussy’s community, reclaiming what it means to be punk and forcefully carving a space for themselves.
To close off the set, ‘Drunk II’ is resurrected to squeals and fans whirl and scream to the ballad of drunken-longing and heartache, clutching to each other as they face the memories. ‘Emotional High’ is dedicated to the solo gig-goers and is warm and euphoric, as if plucked from a coming of age movie set in the American suburbs. The set closes with the ‘Romantic’, the title track from their second album in a whirr of dreamy guitars, and then the house lights appear, and Mannequin Pussy disappear as effortlessly as they arrived.
Kaitlyn Brockley
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Images: Kaitlyn Brockley
