Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa Dabice once boasted that she “get[s] along with everyone I meet”; six years later, she no longer sees that trait as a virtue. On the Philadelphia band’s snarling new single “I Got Heaven,” she takes up spitefulness as a form of love. Fed up with Christian hypocrisy, Dabice anoints herself guardian angel over those who’ve suffered from religious judgment. “I wish I could have been there to save you from the reach,” she yells, spit flying onto the microphone. “For what they did to you, I will never lay to rest.”
“I Got Heaven” rides the same relentless wave that made the band’s 2016 album, Romantic, a punk staple. Bassist Colins Regisford takes the lead with a grimy melody while guitarist Maxine Steen and drummer Kaleen Reading crash around him. When the song’s abrasive verses yield to a sugary power-pop chorus—the combination of lush vocal harmonies and fuzzy guitar riffs recalling ’90s acts like that dog. or Belly—it’s akin to pressing your face against the air conditioner during a heat wave. That change-up from cathartic punk to dopamine-inducing power-pop is like Dabice reversing the compass from hell to salvation.
