Mannequin Pussy reflect on life, love and heartbreak: "Love is my ultimate muse"

Philadelphia favourites Mannequin Pussy are experts in portraying the highs and lows of love, heartbreak and moving on with noisy, super-relatable punk. Guitarist Marisa Dabice tells us about their third record, ‘Patience’.

Hey Marisa, how’s it going?
Eh, it's going alright, American politics are infecting my head right now. I have a hard time separating what happens in the news from how I'm personally doing. Trying to work on that though...

So, the press release for ‘Patience’ describes it as your “most personal” album to date, is that because of the subject matters covered, or the way you’ve broached them? How do you rate these things?
Haha, that's such a classic thing for a press release to say. Every album we've ever made has been personal! I've never been the kind of lyricist to pick words at random out of a magazine and string them together (although that is a good tactic for when you're feeling stuck). Once Patience was done, and I started listening back to the mixes, I had a few moments of just sheer panic. I was listening back to what I said and started asking myself: oh fuck, do I really want to admit all this so publicly? I hadn't experienced that before with an album. That moment where you wonder if maybe you should self-censor, asking yourself if you're actually ready to talk about these things with an audience, is a crucial one. I think it's still going to be a struggle with a few of the themes on the record, but I'm trying to shed the shame of some of these experiences.

Has being three albums deep, or just growing older, impacted the topics you want to write or sing about?
Love is my ultimate muse. I love every part of a relationship - from those beginning weeks of lust to falling in love and then to when it's nothing more than a pile of ashes, and you're stumbling around heartbroken wondering if you'll ever feel happy again. For a long time, my coping mechanism in life was denial; if I could just blackout traumatic experiences, then I wouldn't have to suffer through them. While that may be nice in theory, the fact is that it doesn't work forever. Eventually, you're going to have to come face to face with your biggest traumas and figure out how to accept that they've happened and survive. This is the first record that I started to explore certain experiences that I had previously ignored, I think it made for a few very difficult days in the studio, but ultimately I'm proud that I decided to confront it.

Which musicians do you personally connect with, in a similar way to how you’d like fans to connect with your band?
I love Michelle Zauner [Japanese Breakfast] so much. She's not only a great friend to me, but she's also a musician and peer that I'm so inspired by. When I listen to her albums and the words she's singing I experience that sensation where you're like "how did this person get in my head and put into words what I've been struggling to say for so long???" She writes about grief and sex and desolation in such beautiful ways. And she shreds on guitar!!