Patience [CD]

The third full-length from Mannequin Pussy, Patience is an album fascinated with the physical experience of the body, its songs tracking the movements of mouths and hands and racing hearts, skin and spit and teeth and blood. Deeply attuned to the power of their own physicality, the Philadelphia-based band channels complex emotion in blistering riffs, thrashing rhythms, vocals that feel as immediate and untamed as a gut reaction. But throughout Patience, the Philadelphia-based band contrasts that raw vitality with intricate melodies and finely detailed arrangements, building a strange and potent tension that makes the album all the more cathartic. The follow-up to Romantic—a 2016 release praised by Pitchfork for “combin[ing] punk, shoegaze, death metal, and more, with the ferocious push-pull energy of a mosh pit”—Patience came to life at Studio 4 in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. In creating the album, Mannequin Pussy worked with producer/engineer Will Yip (Quicksand, The Menzingers), shaping an explosive sound that never overshadows the subtlety of their songwriting. “In the past there’s been a chaotic feeling to the recording process, but working with Will put us in a different headspace,” says Dabice. “It helped us show our progression over the past few years and make a very crisp-sounding record, without losing the dirtiness of what Mannequin Pussy really is.”