Model Pussy seem in our Spring 2024 Concern with cowl stars Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Kevin Summary, the Marías, and Palaye Royale. Head to the AP Store to seize a replica.
The members of Model Pussy have spent their post-pandemic years comparatively exterior of the highlight, working day jobs, prioritizing private and psychological well being, and experimenting with new sounds, kinds, and configurations. The Philly-based band launched into an formidable cross-country 2021 tour that left them brief one van full of substances and gear, the itemized listing for which remains to be at giant on r/indieheads, and earned them a fame as an electrifying rock band with stay performances that fall someplace between Metallica (see Kaleen Studying’s stint as a drummer for the all-female tribute band Misstallica) and Patti Smith. However their new document, I Obtained Heaven, takes a extra solitary method.
“We’re a stay band, however the objective for this document was additionally to be one thing that you may hearken to as a solitary expertise. It’s very reflective of that headspace, a minimum of lyrically,” says the band’s frontwoman and songwriter Marisa “Missy” Dabice. “However the stay present is such a chance to specific our collective creativity and have interaction within the collective rage that we’ve got in a bigger music group. Persons are in search of launch.”
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Dabice, too, has been in search of launch. Deeply private, and at instances coping with trauma, her songwriting has served as a salve via abusive relationships and battles with well being. Utilizing rage as a cathartic engine, Model Pussy’s anarchic perspective shortly turned a favourite of latest punk listeners and critics alike. Because the band’s frontwoman, Dabice’s despondent howl has change into a rallying cry for reckless romantics. On I Obtained Heaven, she assumes a dreamier vocal register, inverting the strung-out sound that gave Model Pussy their laurels.
Since their 2013 self-released debut, Model Pussy have carved an area as an outspoken, heartbroken rock band unafraid to toe the road between riot grrrl and romantic. Their aptly titled 2016 album Romantic turned their “breakthrough” with its unabashed, head-thrashing sound, and Persistence put harsh sounds to even harsher emotions whereas holding out hope within the “Emotional Excessive” that belays all-time low. However there’s new hope for the hopeless romantic: With their first full-length launch in 5 years, Model Pussy debut a softer sound, belied with matches of ardour. From mosh-ready “OK? OK! OK? OK!” to the spiraling sing-along “Nothing Like,” the blows could soften, however their bluntness stays.
Our name falls a number of hours after the discharge of “Nothing Like,” shared with an AI-generated music video to blended opinions from the general public. The loyal Model Pussy fanbase, who as soon as erupted in a “Fuck Ohio” refrain in opposition to the state the place the aforementioned gear had been stolen, voiced emotions of betrayal and disappointment at using AI by the band who’ve taken a stand on the whole lot from police brutality to tech censorship.
For steadfast followers, it might really feel like one thing’s modified — and it has. The departure of Athanasios Paul, and the addition of Maxine Steen on guitar and synths, are felt in each sound and sentiment, nestling I Obtained Heaven in a extra pop outcropping of the music panorama that oscillates between boygenius and Bikini Kill. The band are mixing up their sound whereas sustaining their self-sacrificing songwriting — the powerful love “tiny tablet” followers like to swallow.
As Colins “Bear” Regisford places it, “We tapped into a number of concepts on the softer aspect that we’ve by no means actually tapped into earlier than, however I nonetheless really feel prefer it has the identical stage of rawness and vulnerability.”
I Obtained Heaven softens the sinew-ed songwriting of the indie-punk band and a brand new romance emerges as Dabice tempers the highs and lows of affection in solitude.
In the present day is a giant day with the discharge of a brand new single. How are you feeling about placing out extra music?
MARISA “MISSY” DABICE: I’m positively feeling very excited in regards to the music lastly being out. I don’t need to say I’m having fun with the controversy that’s coming from this video being utilized by an AI artist, however I’m actually occupied with it. We do issues as a band which might be controversial. There’s this notion of “AI-generated,” that means no actual human palms or artists truly contact the footage, however the video is by an actual artist who spent hours of time animating over an actual video of me and used AI as a software to create photographs which might be additionally fully distinctive and are usually not plagiarism. Any artist has instruments of their software belt that they use. Folks see AI-generated as a dismissive clickbait time period for what the video truly is. It took a lot time to create with actual artists’ palms, however the notion is that it’s plagiarism due to the phrases AI. However I don’t stay on Twitter.
Are you able to inform me a bit in regards to the choice to make use of AI?
DABICE: Properly, to be actual, we spent a lot of the finances that we had on our prior music movies. Our artistic administrators confirmed me this animator, Connor Clarke. I believed his work was fascinating, stunning, glitchy, and creepy. He’s an actual artist — he creates each single body. I do perceive the perceptions, and I don’t need to disappoint individuals, however generally individuals additionally don’t perceive what’s going on and what goes into it. They simply hear a phrase after which assume the worst in regards to the precise intention and artistry. Connor is an actual artist, and I feel he’s very gifted and made one thing that was stunning and authentic and spoke to the depth and the lightness of the music.
Does it really feel completely different delivering one thing to a wider viewers now that you simply’ve reached “rock star stage”?
DABICE: Do you suppose we’ve reached the extent of “rock stars”?
Persons are enthusiastic about you — there’s a giant fanbase. However I really feel like for musicians who’re dwelling their similar lives, generally it doesn’t really feel like a lot has modified.
DABICE: It appears like quite a bit has modified. In the previous few years, issues are on a totally completely different stage than they’ve ever been for us. It’s so overwhelming at instances to understand that your life is altering, and you need to adapt to these modifications in the very best and cleanest manner doable.
We’ve realized we’re anticipated to be working on this a lot greater stage than we ever have earlier than. All of us have actually dug into our personal well being and psychological wellness in a manner that I don’t suppose I’ve ever seen us collectively do earlier than. It reveals quite a lot of progress and maturity and what it appears to be like like once you’re reaching success for the primary time in your 30s.
With the addition of Maxine, do you are feeling just like the sound has modified and the chemistry that you’ve got collectively?
DABICE: Maxine and I met [in Berlin] getting stoned and making music. We had been simply hanging out in a room making music, and from 2016 on, Maxine was one in every of my favourite producers and musicians. I simply felt so impressed and excited by the best way we shared concepts, and he or she made my concepts really feel larger and extra realized, and now I get to be in a band with three of my favourite musicians. It’s a reasonably blessed circumstance.
MAXINE STEEN: Missy and I had been associates for some time, and we’ve been engaged on music collectively below a undertaking known as Rosie Thorne. We had been immediate collaborators. We share quite a lot of the identical drive to make artwork, and I feel we’ve got quite a lot of enjoyable making artwork with one another. I really feel very fortunate to be within the Model Pussy fold. However I additionally felt like once you’re right here, you’re household. I took my first estrogen patch within the Model Pussy van with my associates. I simply really feel like we’ve got such a fantastic, trustworthy relationship with one another. We’re all such good associates that I feel working collectively is only a byproduct of our relationship with one another.
COLINS “BEAR” REGISFORD: The band had been a sure manner for therefore lengthy, and Maxine introduced such a distinct mild and texture, particularly along with her synth wizardry. It simply elevated our concepts and made quite a lot of these songs quite a bit brighter and extra enjoyable, and it’s nice that she’s a freak like the remainder of us.
Have you ever developed a brand new artistic course of, when it comes to how everybody contributes to a music on this album?
STEEN: I really feel like each music was so completely different in the best way it was created. Some songs had been written with all of us within the room. A few of them begin as shitty demos on my pc. Certainly one of them me and Missy wrote after we had been tripping on acid within the woods in New Hampshire — “Break up Me Open.” All of the songs got here collectively in their very own methods.
DABICE: Yeah, “OK? OK! OK? OK!” began from simply that vocal valley woman affectation I used to be doing within the follow area, after which Kaleen began doing that drum fill, and Maxine and Bear stuffed within the area between the highest line melody and Kaleen’s drum beat. You by no means know, once you’re in that artistic area collectively, how a music goes to fall out of you. You simply must be listening to the second that makes you need to write it.
By way of this album feeling more healthy and extra mature, it appears like that comes via lyrically, too.
DABICE: I feel so. Nothing about this album makes me uncomfortable, as a result of it’s actually not an album that’s about anybody else. It’s much more about spending time in solitude, spending time with your self and your personal ideas, fascinated with how need performs a job in your life, [and] realizing that you simply’re most likely not at a spot the place you ought to be inviting anybody in. So usually I feel it’s very apparent that we stay in a society that pressures individuals to be in relationships, particularly younger girls. You might be inspired to be immensely self-sacrificing for the individuals that you simply love. We’ve seen it with our moms and our grandmothers on and on and on. There are simply sure sacrifices which might be anticipated of you. I really feel prefer it’s anticipated that we are going to sacrifice the very individual that we’re for another person.
It’s fascinating to listen to you say that nothing on this album makes you uncomfortable. I feel a lot of music, and your music, is about making individuals uncomfortable on objective, or giving individuals area to really feel these uncomfortable emotions that they won’t specific anyplace else.
DABICE: Discomfort is kind of inspiring. I feel, like with our music, that good rock bands are speculated to make individuals uncomfortable and piss individuals off and get individuals considering in new methods.
How does Model Pussy immediate individuals to consider the world, and themselves, in new methods?
DABICE: The world of Model Pussy is a self-sustaining entity that continues to push us into corners of the world we by no means knew we might find yourself in. Bands are mainly socialist experiments the place everybody has a say, everybody has a spot to share their enter and their creativity, and we’ve seen the way it all types and congeals between the 4 of us. We’re taking the dangers. We’re assuming the losses. We’re celebrating the wins, all as a collective unit.
STEEN: I feel the primary objective is expression. We need to maintain writing, maintain creating and rising, and getting older is scorching. Like, let’s rock till the wheels fall off.
Make-up by Nina Carelli
Hair by Yukie Nammori
Styling by Amber Simiriglia
Studio help by Brooke Marsh
