Like many artists this past year, 2020 was a challenging one for Mannequin Pussy. Just a few months removed from releasing Patience – their first record for Epitaph Records – the world was shut down by COVID-19. After discovering that creating new music in a socially distant type of way wasn’t working, the Philadelphia-based trio booked time at Will Yip’s Studio 4 to spark some creativity. What emerged was the Perfect EP – a five-track collection that showcases the best of Mannequin Pussy’s sound while also displaying a tenderness within. From the booming passion of “Control” and “To Lose You” to the abrasive thrash of the title track and “Pigs is Pigs,” Mannequin Pussy continues to evolve their style in incredibly special and diverse ways. Below, guitarist/vocalist Missy Dabice and I discuss being creative during a global pandemic, working with Yip, and “Drunk II” (of course).
It’s funny calling Perfect an extended play since it’s like literally what, two minutes shorter than Romantic, which is technically a full length.
Yeah. I definitely kind of have some like almost like conflicting feelings in calling it an EP just because it feels complete to me. And just like in that sense of people tend not to really care about EPs. (laughs)
This was recorded during the pandemic so after being physically apart from your bandmates for so long, how did it feel just to get back together to make this?
It was like one of the highlights of my year last year, it was just you spent so much time away from the people that you care about and that you’re used to spending so much of your time with and getting to be creative with each other on an almost daily basis. And so with that kind of like extended break, we all early on tried to do the like, “Oh, well, we’ll work on demos from home.” And then very quickly realized that we were all really depressed and numb. And numbness does not make for great creative strides. So we decided to force ourselves into a situation where we hope it wouldn’t be like a complete waste of time.
I hate how this past year has kind of set these expectations that artists are to be like content creators. I know for a while y’all were doing a lot of cool things with merch and stuff but even that gets super overwhelming. How difficult was it to adjust over the past year?
It’s been really difficult. It still feels difficult, honestly. I mean, I think that there’s this like wide shift over to this idea that, yeah, our artists exist now to only create content, to like make little image squares and keep people interested in the idea that you still exist as an artist. And that’s really demoralizing as well. Not only when you are collectively going through something that millions of other people are, but, you know there’s still this external pressure that you feel to kind of continue to be part of people’s lives in this way, I think I’m still like really wrapping my head around this line where you have to kind of assert yourself that like no, I’m an artist who works to create things, not to make content to make sure that like we’re relevant or something. This isn’t like a fully thought out thought yet, but it’s definitely something that’s been in my head a lot. The song “Perfect” definitely came out of that and that pressure to look perfect in a very imperfect time.
Yeah that was actually going to be one of my follow-up questions – if that song is a response to how we’re just reducing artists to content creators and making art so disposable
A hundred percent. Yeah. You got it. It’s so like unnerving now and I never thought about it so much. It’s like you make music, you go on tour, you are in this flow where kind of like every night you’re doing the thing that you’ve worked so hard to do. And then suddenly when that’s not around and your life becomes exponentially digitized and your relationships become digitized and your communications become digitized. You start to see your own worth in this digital way as well. And I think that’s a very dangerous place, not just for my kind of sense of who I am, but for literally millions of other people to start experiencing their life like that.
Yeah. We’re going to have many years of trauma to unpack from just this past like 16 months. Like it’s just insane to think about and I hate thinking about it cause it stresses me out too.
Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, I try to focus sometimes on like the positive aspects. I think there is something very positive with how a lot of people have had this time of like really deep introspection and reflection. You know, you definitely see a lot more people who are coming to terms with who they really are and who they really want to be and what they think this country should be like going forward and how government should be run and asking themselves these much deeper questions that on a daily basis, you know, kind of the way that the capitalist system is set up, they don’t want us to think about those things. And now we’ve had a year where I think a lot more people are starting to really ask themselves that and with deep introspection usually comes, you know, years of trauma work.
The band once again worked with Will Yip. He just brings such a great aura and knowledge to these recording sessions. What was different during these sessions than the Patience ones, other than the fact they were recorded in the midst of a global pandemic?
When we went to record Patience, we already had all the songs. We already had all the ideas. But this was the first time that we went in with almost nothing, we only had one song which was “Control.” And even that song was like on thin ice with me. So we just got into the studio and just played. And Will, he’s just so like maniacally positive in this way. That is that I think you need sometimes when you’re a more, like, I’m like a more like self-hatred person. Like I really like hate a lot of the things that I do. And so having Will there when we’re working out a song for the very first time and he can immediately pick up on the things we’re doing that he’s like, ‘this is great. I love that.’ It allowed us to just kind of be at peace with what we wrote in the span of an hour. You know, I think maybe we wrote “Perfect” in an hour we wrote “Pigs is Pigs” in over two hours and we wrote “To Lose You” in a few hours, like they just happened so fast. And I don’t think it would have happened that fast without his presence.
That’s such a great way to describe his personality as maniacally positive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything negative come out of his mouth or ever heard anyone say anything bad about him. He’s just such a great person to have like in this community, in this scene.
Yeah. I really love Will, and I just love how much he loves music. I feel like being around Will, after that year of so much isolation and, you know, very frankly like asking myself, if this is what I want to continue to do? Like, do I love making music? Like, I don’t feel like I love it right now. I don’t want to make it right now. And then being in that space with someone like Will who reminded me of all the reasons why I love it.
I feel like I see a tweet or like a meme about “Drunk II” online fairly regularly. Does that like kinda like online virality of it or just like the presence of that track always kind of linger in the back of your head when you’re creating new Mannequin Pussy songs? Because every band wants to have a song like “Drunk II” where fans love it, critics love it, but then it’s like, you almost have to live up to it and it’s just always just kind of there. Do you ever like feel that kind of internal or external pressure because of that song?
Yes. All the fucking time! I kind of come to resent it because honestly, like it is really it’s much easier to make music in obscurity. And then when you make something that people really love, you’re like, ‘Oh fuck Oh no. Like what if I never write another song that someone will love?’ You know? And I’m sure this existed before the digitized aspect of like what we were talking about before, but like you literally have like analytics to be like, ‘Oh yeah, people don’t want this as much as another song.’ I think that’s a real downside of the current state of culture that we’re in is it was just like these very present numbers and analytics that I think unfortunately can make an artist a little too obsessed with the numbers rather than with sound. But it’s really exciting to me that, you know, the song has been out for almost two years now and that people are still finding it. And even people who have first listened to it two years ago still say they listen to it all the time. It feels really powerful to write something that seems to have a lasting impact on people. And that is kind of the goal of processing your own pain through music is that it kind of like lives on through that way. You know, like that song, that song will outlive me, which is pretty cool.
Yeah. It’s always like a double-edged sword.
Yes, definitely. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a “Drunk II” again but I don’t know if like I have to, I hope I never am in that same emotional place that I was in when I wrote it, but I also don’t think I ever will be again.
And I did not plan on mentioning double-edged sword and then transitioning to the next question about “Control” – that just weirdly happened so I’m sorry (laughs). But you directed the video. Have you always directed the Mannequin Pussy videos or is this the first time you’ve directed a video for your band?
I directed the video for “Drunk II.”
Okay. That’s what I thought. I just couldn’t remember. So what was the inspiration behind that visual? I mean, I bet it had to feel pretty good to like wield the sword for it and kind of release a lot of pent up aggression from being inside the last year or so.
Oh, definitely. I mean I’m a very aggressive person. I’m not violent, but like I have a lot of energy and, you know, I enjoy like screaming on stage and I enjoy making aggressive music and things like that. And I first started writing “Control” in late 2018 or early 2019, I forget now, but it was at a time where I was like working like three different jobs and felt so trapped and unable to create music and we had other legal stuff going on and, and just all this… all this stuff, like all I wanted to do was just like create something and I felt so trapped. And the song just kind of started in that way. And then obviously as you know, words in a different time come to take on new meanings as well. It became not just this like figurative feeling of trapped, but also a bit more literal. And I was rewatching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And I love how much that movie really fragments reality and fantasy, and that’s something I really try to do or I really wanted to do. And I’m really interested in taking like a very human emotion and warping it into this almost like fantasy place where you’re not sure if what’s happening is really happening or it’s happening in someone’s mind. So just like the image of the two characters waking up in the bed on the beach in Montauk is where I was like, oh, like that would be so cool to just like build a bedroom on a beach and just like light it on fire. Like wouldn’t look so great and feel so, so good to just mess it up. And again, like kind of playing with that sort of ‘is this really happening or is this like happening in someone’s head?’ And I think as soon as you take the inside and put it outdoors, you’re bridging those worlds a little bit.
It’s a striking visual.
I’m really proud of it. I really hope more people see it cause like, that’s like one of the most DIY shoots. It was so last minute, but we were initially going to have an animation for it and animation is really expensive and the next video “Perfect” is going to be like our big money video because it’s a lot more high concept and there’s more people and things like that involved in it. So yeah, then once I just started watching Eternal Sunshine and just trying to come up with a different idea, it was like, ‘Oh, besides building a set and having a very small crew, we can probably pull us off for not so much money.’ And while that was true, the setup of it alone took like eight hours. It was wild.
I’ve found that this isolation and not being able to do what you regularly do has led to a lot of cool creative DIY videos. And so I think this pandemic has inadvertently untapped this whole new side of the creativity that you have to use when you’re in a situation like that.
Oh, totally. I was not interested in, like directing a video like over a zoom or something. I still wanted to use the physical world and like the environment that exists around me, but think about like how we create things in this new way. And it is like really exciting, And like the film world in Philly has been back to work for a long time, like they’d been shooting movies and TV shows and commercials and things like that. But what hasn’t really been going on is the more creative things. So Drew Saracco, who is my director of photography – and I were supposed to make a video together last year for “High Horse.” And then that obviously never happened. So we just were waiting to work together for so long. No one makes music videos like for the money, it’s just like the creative release of making something that’s different and completely within your own control in your own vision. That’s what I love so much about filmmaking is just the collaboration behind it.
”Pigs is Pigs” is one of my favorite moments on the record. I love it when the band gets abrasive with their sound. Is this the first time (bassist) Bear (Regisford) is taking lead on a Mannequin Pussy song? Or am I just misremembering?
Yeah, this is the first time. Like he and I have like screamed together on a few songs on Patience. But I knew, especially after we made Patience, that we gotta do Bear songs. I love Bear’s voice. I love his way of projecting. I love how his voice sounds like. And I knew that, especially after not just like last year, but I mean, in terms of, you know, I can’t speak for the things that he’s gone through, but I’ve been there for a lot of it. I’ve been his band mate and his friend for years. I was like, ‘Yo, you ha you have to use your voice. It’s gotta be you.’
He brings that much needed different perspective to other things that have been happening over the years. And I just love where that song is placed. It’s just such a great jolt right before the end of the EP.
We were always kind of unsure when we started doing these songs, like how’s this all gonna fit? And then we realized like, this is actually the way that the EP was written. Now that I think about it, it was like we had “Control” first and then I wrote “Perfect.” And then we wrote “To Lose You” and “Pigs is Pigs.” And then I dug through my demo files of the past five years and pulled out “Darling” again to remake into a song. But I’m really excited by Bear taking more lead moments. And I think that’s definitely something that we’re going to continue to do in the future because I want to hear him as well.
What I love about this EP is just how perfectly it displays the width and diversity of the sound of your band. Not many bands can achieve that versatility in such a short amount of a runtime. And so that’s just so fucking cool. I’m assuming that’s probably an area of focus when you are writing a new record. You just don’t want it to sit at just one level of intensity – you want it to have peaks and valleys.
The art we make is like a reflection of who we are as people I’m not often in like the same emotional state. I mean maybe a little bit more as I grow older and I have a little bit more like self-control over my emotions, but I’ve always described just like the sheer concept of like what Mannequin Pussy is and the way that we want to make music is that it is like a reflection of all the emotions that we experience as human beings. Right? Like the way that you feel about something, the way you feel about something terrible that happens to you, usually you don’t stay in that same emotional place towards that experience your whole life. I always point to the five stages of grief. Right, right. You get very angry that it happens. You get very sad that It happens. You finally come to acceptance about it.
There are artists who sometimes are stuck in the same kind of zone or style of their signature sound regardless of what’s happening around them. And I feel like Mannequin Pussy records just like, ‘nah, fuck it.’ We’re going to do a thrash song. Or a big sprawling indie rock song – just doing whatever the fuck you want. And I love that vibe of this EP so much.
I feel like this is definitely the band just doubling down on that. Yeah. We’re doubling down on just our right to make whatever kind of music that comes to us. And I’m very excited see where that goes in the future. I mean, it’s very different now too. I know you didn’t bring it up, but Athanasios left the band around the time we were like, kind of still working in the studio. Like it was very clear that he was like, ‘I don’t really think I want to do this anymore.’ Like he was ready for the next stage of his life. But I’m very excited that we got this because it feels like the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Right. It’s exciting in a sense that like ‘Oh wow. I really don’t know what we’re going to make next.’