Ever listen to fashionable noisy pop and feel let down, like it’s not brutish enough? Some of these noise pop groups making the blog rounds these days seem afraid of their own racket, like they’ve got these amps and these pedals and they know how to make the neighbors call the cops during practice but they don’t really have any control over the sounds they’re making. I don’t feel like that’s the case with Mannequin Pussy, though. I mean, you can’t call yourself something like “Mannequin Pussy” and not be tough as all shit. Even so, their debut full length Gypsy Pervert is racket with swagger that somehow also contains plenty of dynamic depth and melodicism. It’s a thrilling depiction of the glory of ugly noise backing up beautiful hooks, contradictions and sonic violence all embraced.
I know, I know, you’re saying “I’VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE!” but that’s the same thing Mannequin Pussy say, quite literally in the case of “Clue Juice,” the early single that first brought the group to my attention. “Clue Juice” initially tricks you into thinking it’s going to be some simple, power chord heavy basement punk, but the twin guitar assault shifts over from a post-Nirvana kind of thing in the intro to a Crime-indebted bend and twist assault on the verse. The vocals are frustration incarnate, an angry, simple loop of variations on the declaration that someone isn’t going to take this shit anymore, run through heaps of distortion until it’s hard to tell apart the screams of the guitar and the screams of the vocalist. Meanwhile, the drums are punching through the mix, avoiding the usual demand of keeping everyone on the same beat, instead encouraging everyone to just lose their shit. You listen to it and want to sock someone. Metaphorically of course.
The band is even more destructive on “Sneaky Nips,” one of the most exciting opening tracks I’ve heard in ages, where the guitars swirl like a tornado, culminating in a “chorus” comprised of grunts, yelps and hyperventilated breathing. It doesn’t end so much as it completely falls apart into a mess of jagged strums, feedback and broken cymbals. Later, “Someone Like You” is just as punk in tempo and levels of distortion but the band flexes some of its shoegaze influences with the chimy reverb effect on the guitars and the hazy vocal while “Sheet City” shows off yet another side of the band with sprinklings of ’50s rock guitar and a Blondie-like approach to the chorus and bridge.
But the heart of the paradoxical Mannequin Pussy aesthetic is best revealed by the fact that “Clue Juice” is followed by “Clit Eastwood,” a sluggish, relatively sparse number that has as much “House of the Rising Sun” DNA as it does Babes in Toyland DNA. Beneath the musky musical exterior, there’s an almost sweet vocal delivery and the high BPM that’s standard for most Mannequin Pussy songs never makes an appearance, the track just keeps a deliberate pace throughout so the atmosphere can be properly soaked up. Those two extremes are even more overtly connected on “Terror No,” a song that has the band doing its best Pretenders impression, only with a brattier vocal delivery and brittle guitar lines that build until they prematurely explode at less than a minute and a half. Or maybe the better connective tissue is “Meat Slave 2” (Meat Slave 1 inexplicably never makes an appearance), a disarmingly dreamy moment of the album that marries a primal, glammy beat to some J. Mascis guitar and a genuinely beautiful vocal.
Whichever is the best example is ultimately secondary to Mannequin Pussy’s uncanny ability to ride two extremes, and in the process make each end of the spectrum stand out all the more as a result. Gypsy Pervert is an album that sets out to prove Mannequin Pussy not only have a handle on the noise, they’re confident enough in their control that they can mold it into beautiful garage pop whenever they feel so inclined, which is surprisingly often. It’s not that the cacophony disappears in the “prettier” tracks, instead it just blossoms into the controlled and precise rage of a prize fighter, targeting your brain’s weak points of melody and danceable rhythm. Mannequin Pussy will win you over either through a full frontal assault or something a little more intricate, but either way, they’re going to win you over.
Gypsy Pervert comes out September 9th through Tiny Engines, but you can stream it now.
Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Loser City as well as Ovrld, where he contributes music reviews and writes a column on undiscovered Austin bands. You can also flip through his archives at Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with friends and enemies on twitter: @Nick_Hanover
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