Mannequin Pussy – Referred by The Jellyfish Brothers
America’s Most Underrated features local bands from across the country that deserve widespread recognition. Each band is handpicked by the previous column’s highlighted artist to create a collective of underrated bands chosen by underrated bands.
If there’s one thing that Boston music fans can appreciate, it’s gritty, sentimental grunge rock performed in atypical spaces. This week’s most underrated, Mannequin Pussy, prove that’s exactly what Philadelphia’s music has to offer.
Mannequin Pussy is a three-piece NYC-turned-Philly grunge rock band. Led by the thoughtfully ferocious Marisa Dabice, the band is like LVL Up if they had a vocal performance by a more tame and mellow example of Makthaverskan’s Maja Milner. After playing a show with the group in Miami, The Jellyfish Brothers referred us to Mannequin Pussy for their relentlessly loud and unapologetic lo-fi punk.
We got a chance to talk to Dabice about the emotional roots that led to Mannequin Pussy’s formation, what it means to be a band in the Internet age, and the environment that makes the Philadelphia music scene tick.
Allston Pudding: Tell me about Mannequin Pussy. How did you get started?
Marisa Dabice: Do you want the real story, which is kind of sad, or do you want the fluffed story that we’ve told many times before?
AP: I would much rather have the real story.
MD: The real story is that maybe almost four years ago, my mom had a stroke. I moved back to the East Cost, to New York. She was in the hospital and I was feeling really sad and had just went through a really intense breakup with someone who was very special to me. I really wanted to start playing guitar, because I just started experiencing all of these emotions very deeply and didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t really know anyone in New York that played music except my childhood friend, Thanasi. So one day I was at the hospital and I called him. I said I really wanted to get out of there, so maybe we could hang and jam. We met up, and that’s pretty much how Mannequin Pussy started – just playing songs out of desperation.
AP: Thank you for sharing that with me. So you say that you started playing music to help process emotions. How would you say playing music makes you feel?
MD: I feel like I can’t put it better than Bob Marley did, “one good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” When I’m playing music, I’m practicing the mastery of my emotions. Those painful experiences can be creatively transformative but first you have to learn not to let them control you.
AP: So you released the Kiss Me Tender demos in August. What was the general reaction to that?
MD: I don’t know. I never really am aware of what the reception is to things I put out. I have noticed people singing along to some of those songs at shows, so I would imagine it was a positive reception. I’m pretty proud of those songs, too, because those are the first batch of songs that weren’t written about a relationship or person, but bigger ideas about very personal things.
AP: Can you tell me about some of those bigger ideas that you focused on in these?
MD: The overall theme of those songs was about accepting times in your life where you have to be really lonely and accept it and how sometimes, even when you’re out with people, they ignore you because technology is pulling them in other ways to take their attention.
“Meatslave One” is definitely about frustration at how hard it is for anyone to just look each other in the eye and talk to each other in a significant way when it seems that everyone would rather be on their iPhones. It was more just observations from playing a lot of shows and seeing how people communicate with each other and how it’s really hard for people to communicate in a person-to-person way.
AP: It’s really interesting that you bring up the point of technology and how people would rather be on their iPhone when I feel like social media is becoming so much more important for small bands to promote themselves. How do you feel about that being in a band?
MD: I think that’s a hard topic for me to dive into because we definitely have an online presence. Mannequin Pussy itself is a very Google-able name and entity. We haven’t been able to hide. There was a time when I thought I would be able to separate who I am as a person from this band, but that has proven not to be true. They have become one together. A lot of that has to do with how small bands rely in a certain way on the Internet and Facebook and Twitter to connect with people and to let them know that, ‘hey, we made something new,’ or ‘hey we’re going on tour,’ or whatever we’re doing.
I pretty much only use the Internet for the band. It feels much more positive to me than going on Facebook to gossip. I go on Facebook to ask people to help us book shows when we’re going on tour. It feels more positive in that sense.
AP: Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it. Are you planning anything big for 2015?
MD: We might have a split tape coming out with Amanda X later in the year, which is one of our favorite Philly bands. We’re going to do a split tape with them. It’s been a long time since we recorded anything. It’s been almost a year, so I’m really anxious to get out a lot of the new songs that I’ve been playing. I’m really ready to move on from pretty much everything that we’ve written up until now. I feel like we haven’t done our best yet. We haven’t written our best song yet. That’s the challenge for 2015 – to write something that surpasses everything we’ve already done.
AP: How do you plan to do that?
MD: I don’t know. I guess by hoping and working really hard, getting better at my instrument and not being afraid to go in new directions and experiment with new ideas. Writing less from an emotional and self-centered place to write something that is more like social activism. That’s the way that I’ve really been challenging myself to write. To write things that would be of interest to me.
AP: Musical activism is a good transition. What is it like to be a woman in your genre of music?
MD: You know, I really don’t think about my gender when I’m playing music and I don’t think about my gender when I’m writing music. It’s something that’s really only brought up in interviews. I feel like our music is so loud and aggressive, and some people are not used to seeing woman perform in that capacity. Whenever someone is surprised by that, to me it just means they haven’t been paying attention.
There are so many bands outside of Mannequin Pussy that are aggressive and passionate and doing really incredible things, making incredible music. For all of my other friends that are female musicians, we don’t really focus too much on that. We’re struggling just to be seen as musicians without any of the signifiers for gender. We can’t help that we were born with XX chromosomes and I wish that sometimes people would stop highlighting that more than the music.
AP: Yeah. That’s a really fascinating take on that. You did talk about music activism. What are you interested in?
MD: I’ve always believed that the personal is political. I definitely noticed changes over the past few years about how people have conversations on women’s bodies and homophobia and racism and sexism. I really hope that people for the most part will stay angry over the things that they seem to get so worked up about, especially on the Internet. Whenever something really big happened, everyone would talk about it, but I hope that people are still having those conversations and passing the microphone to the parties that can speak from a place of knowledge and share their experiences that help the rest of white America to understand how things are for other people. I think I see myself as more supportive of how other people speak rather than my own ideas.
AP: Wow, yeah. Switching gears, how would you describe the music scene in Philly?
MD: Philly is really sweet. I have been to so many great shows here. There are so many people that are active. It’s really inspiring when you see a lot of really great bands and every time you see them they’re playing new songs. People have shows in really interesting spaces. I feel very lucky to have been able to move here with the band and step into a really supportive environment of bands I immediately clicked with and admire. I feel very challenged by how talented everyone is.
AP: What are some of your favorite local bands?
MD: In Philly, I love Amanda X and Spirit of the Beehive. Those are probably my favorite bands here right now. Spirit of the Beehive is one of those bands where you watch them and I get angry at how good they are. They’re so painfully loud and they make all of these extraordinary sounds that I can’t even begin to imagine how they do. I’m watching them and kind of studying it.
AP: If someone were to visit Philly, what’s the one thing you’d recommend they do while there?
MD: Go to the Mutter Mueseum, ‘cause fuck the Liberty Bell and any of that. I don’t want to get into a rant over how much I hate the Liberty Bell, but I would go to the Mutter Museum because it’s the first medical oddities museum. They have a whole wealth of hands in jars and things that people have swallowed. They have the first cast of Siamese twins in formaldehyde. Really Halloween-y, spooky, scientific stuff. You walk around the whole time with your eyes so wide and your hand over your mouth. You’re just like, ‘What the fuck? Where did all of this shit come from? It’s so crazy.’
It makes me think about how varied the human experience can be and what your experience here on Earth could possibly be. I could have been born as Siamese twins and had a completely different life.
AP: That’s so crazy. I didn’t know that museum exists.
MD: You can look it up online too. They have some really far out shit.
AP: Yeah, I’ll have to check it out. Outside of Philly, what are some of your favorite local bands?
MD: Outside of Philly, I love this band Beth Israel from Austin, TX. They’re this really cool band that uses really intricate drum machine patterns with bass and guitar parts. They’re a very far out band.
Colleen Green. I don’t think she’s underrated, though. She’s so fucking talented and everyone knows it. If they don’t, everyone fucking should know it. Whatever, another one of my favorite bands. I really like Chastity Belt. Everything I’ve heard from their new album sounds so good. Who else do I really like right now?
While I was in McAllen, TX on tour, I saw one of the most heartwarming, emotional sets I had seen in a long time. I think her name was Jesika [Cueta]. “Swooned” was the name of split tape she did with Carlos Salamanca.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.