"I have something for your review," Exclaim!'s Online Editor Allie Gregory told me as we spilled onto the street after Mannequin Pussy's Saturday night Concert Hall show. "Like halfway through the show I saw a TikTok zoomer vomit into a garbage can and run directly back into the pit."
It was a night defined by expulsion, both emotional and literal (in addition to the puking zoomer, a man was escorted out by paramedics after experiencing a medical emergency about halfway through Soul Glo's ferocious opening set, leaving a trail of vomit in his wake). So it goes at a Mannequin Pussy show, where the stakes feel heightened to near-superhuman levels and total release feels like the only way forward.
Soul Glo appeared unfazed by the interruption to their floor-shaking maelstrom, returning to the stage and singeing the already-bleached brows off everyone in the front row. And after a brief, buzzy intermission, Marisa Dabice, Colins "Bear" Regisford, Kaleen Reading and Maxine Steen took the stage, promising even more face-melting fury.
Instead, we got a gentle caress. Mannequin Pussy started the show with the acoustic strums of "I Don't Know You," easing the jittery crowd into the band's jagged, opalescent world. That humming, fuzzy opener was quickly followed by its album-mate "Sometimes," and rubber officially met road. The band, in the midst of an entirely sold out, largely venue-upgraded tour, were a whirl of confident showmanship with Dabice at their centre. As a frontperson, Dabice is difficult to peel your eyes from, a shuddering, flailing star who can whiplash between soft fluidity and Mortal Kombat-style power stances on a dime — she manages to absorb her bandmates' onslaught of sound and use it as fuel, feeding on and feeding the sound in equal measure.
The night was marked by an unconventional sense of rhythm, the band's glowering confidence making for an intuitive structure that seemed to prioritize genuine feeling and instinct over planned catharsis. Fan-favourite classic "Drunk II" came shockingly early in the set, while I Got Heaven MVP "Loud Bark" started with a whispered intro before becoming a call-and-response singalong.
The album's title track had the crowd screaming in frantic unison, as Dabice dedicated its tidal waves of sacrilegious fury to anyone who uses their faith to subjugate those around them. "I have an open heart," she declared before squealing the song's "dee-dee-dee-dee de dee-dee" intro.
Dabice's off-kilter star power became most apparent when she took the room down, whispering and twirling her way through a patient monologue on politics and power that included calls for a free Palestine and enough barely contained rage to light the stage on fire. She spoke at length of the ever-widening pit that lives in all of us, her cotton-soft voice landing the show somewhere between post-hardcore meltdown and ASMR showcase. It was a call to action and a call for care, and it ended in a primal scream — "you're not too cool for this," she intoned before counting down from three — that found every voice in the room raised in complete cacophony.
From there, the band tore through a series of their heavier numbers — including "Clams," "Ok? Ok! Ok? Ok!" and "Pigs Is Pigs" — structuring the show much like I Got Heaven, with a pop-heavy front half and annihilatory second.
After the band left the stage and the lights came up, a remix of Cher's "Believe" came booming over the system, sending the crowd into a flurry of dance as they shuffled out the doors. It felt like a release and reminder — amid all the rage there's still plenty of room for joy.