Wedged in among the band’s three separate (and equally rip-roaring) sets aboard the Norwegian Pearl, two members of Philly native group Mannequin Pussy hosted a spirited Austin Powers trivia game in one of the cruise ship’s several multipurpose venues. It was the first full day on the Modest Mouse Ice Cream Floats cruise, an inaugural festival at sea put on by Sixthman also featuring indie stalwarts Built to Spill, Portugal. The Man, Kurt Vile, The Black Heart Procession and more. At trivia start time, the pool was popping with elder hipsters (*complimentary) drinking and draped on deckchairs in the Caribbean sun, but the indoor festivities hosted by Missy Debice and Maxine Steen still brought out dozens of Ice Cream Floaters, the affectionate name for attendees.
Teamless and already a little sun-scorched, I chose not to compete in the Austin Powers know-how. (It turns out I don’t remember a damn thing from this comedy trilogy that Debice says ranks among her favorite films, except for maybe Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell writhing around to “American Woman,” the Lenny Kravitz version, of course.) But I did lurk around the Starlight Lounge to laugh along and then chat with the band gals once the game had wrapped and they’d awarded winners with some memorabilia brought from home, which is now in L.A.
Here is a short On The Record (On a Boat!) with Mannequin Pussy in advance of the band’s return to Nashville for their opening slot on a huge football stadium tour with Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age. The Nissan Stadium show is August 15.
A Q&A With Mannequin Pussy
Celia Gregory: It’s Celia on the record, on a boat, with part of Mannequin Pussy. Welcome back to WNXP, y’all. I’m talking to Missy and Maxine. You actually just finished not playing a show but hosting Austin Powers trivia, which was very whimsical and sweet. I understand you’ve done this in Philly before. They made you do this? They said you have to host something on the boat?
Missy Debice: They said, “You have to host an event.” And I said, “What type of event?” And they said, “I don’t know, whatever.”
Maxine: We had run this once in Philly, just kind of for fun, Missy’s idea, and we smashed it. It was a smashing success!
Celia: There were literally dozens of people in this room because it’s beautiful and sunshiny outside on the boat — I’m painting a picture of this Caribbean cruise — but I think people needed some respite and it was a really fun time… So, back to the music, you are playing a couple times on this boat, on this Modest Mouse Ice Cream Floats cruise. I understand this is not your first, but maybe your second cruise as a band?
Missy: It is.
Celia: [You supported] Coheed and Cambria the first time. As a band performing, what’s the vibe on the boat right now?
Missy: Oh, this is a really nice vibe, actually.
Maxine: Excellent vibe. Both cruises were kind of a different vibe. The last one was intense. This one’s going great.
Celia: You debuted a song last night when you performed. I know you have music in the works, but the last time we had you in Nashville, it was the I Got Heaven tour.
Missy: It was right after I came out, I think.
Mannequin Pussy released their third LP in March of 2024 and came through Nashville, with a Sonic Cathedral session and interview at WNXP, the next month.
Celia: I wonder, with some space away from that time, because it was a huge year for you all in 2024 — it was like a breakthrough in a way, even though you’ve been a band for more than a decade. With some space from it, why do you think that record gathered more into your flock?
Missy: Because it was a better record. And Maxine was in the band now.
Maxine: Yeah, and I also think it was a timing thing, too. A lot of people were like coming out of COVID. It was just such a strange time. And I think people were really hungry for that kind of thing.
Missy: For energetic music. A lot of people discovered us during COVID. And it was really noticeable when we did our first headline out of COVID. That was the first time that we had a whole sold-out tour. And we were actively working on what our next album would be. So it was also our first time in years sharing something new with people at a time that I think people were starting to feel that same sort of simmering rage and joy and all the things that we attempt to put into our music and share with people.
Celia: That’s interesting, the cross-section of people [who] had found you when they were idle, and they were starving for music, the music you’d already laid out, and then it was right on time when you came back with I Got Heaven. I remember you telling me at the time, right in its wake, that these were love songs, right? They vary, but people attached to them because it was harnessing both rage and love and joy. I also read where you said you’re supposed to get less angry as you get older but that’s not the case. Where are we now? It’s a couple years later and what’s going into your music now? ‘Cause I’m feeling more rage, myself.
Missy: Yeah, I think the rage is just continuing to grow all the time. Again, I think that’s a myth of the system is that they try to anesthetize you from your own emotions, to convince you that there’s something immature about you if you continue to feel rage for the world around you. I think that’s the way that they try to shame you. There are so many ways that they use shame as a way to control us, and the way they speak about anger as this really infantilizing thing…it makes people too quick and too maybe insecure that they separate themselves from it or they think something is wrong with them for feeling that way when I think we’re all very aware that we are not the problem.
Maxine: I second that.
Celia: That was like an a-ha moment for me, right? Because it’s this idea of, “Oh, grow up, you’ll get it together when you get older.” And it’s like, “No, you’re trying to shield me from the truth that I can see with my eyes. And now I have a more developed brain. Why are you trying to prevent me from being upset when there’s more to be upset about?”
Maxine: Yeah, the constant gaslighting.
Missy: They’re very quick to be like, “Yeah, the world sucks. That’s just the way it is, you know.”
At this point, in the hallway outside of the venue, two Mannequin Pussy fans approached the artists a little sheepishly and had a brief exchange about the previous night’s show. The female partner said they needed to go, they had dinner reservations. The male of the duo seemed to geek out and exclaimed within earshot, while walking away, “THAT JUST HAPPENED! I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!” Debice and Steen laughed, apparently warmed or at least amused by the fan interaction.
Celia: Ugh, I prevented their joy, they really wanted to connect. I’m so sorry about that. What about music you’ve been working on since, and what’s happening as a band? What can we look forward to, what about creatively collaborating? What’s been going on?
Missy: Well, we’re in a really new space in our creative lives, too, because Maxine and I moved out to Los Angeles last year. And we put all of our stuff into a shared U-Haul and had a friend drive it out for us because we had to go play shows.
Maxine: Yeah, while we were on tour.
Missy: We’re not living together out there, but both [of us are] out there, which has really been wonderful for me to have a friend like Maxine in this new environment. We have a lot of friends out there. But this is the first time as a band we’re disconnected by geography, and so it is kind of presenting new challenges in terms of the way that we work together. But I think it also is like inspiring a new level of discipline, too, because when we get together that time is really sacred and we only have so much of it.
Maxine: The temperature is kind of brewing cool results. I’m excited.
Missy: I’m really excited about a lot of the demos we’re working on, and Bear and Kayleen are coming out to LA in the next two weeks, and we’ll have, I think, 10 days, the four of us together, to just kind of start really digging into the ideas we have. To see where they take us.
Maxine: Entering the grind chamber.
Celia: This is an exciting time to get to talk to you, then, because you said this was your first show of 2026 that you played on this boat. But you seemed still so connected and gelled. That’s just time working in your favor, right? The chemistry you all have as a band, even though you’re geographically apart right now.
Missy: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes to show you play a set 150 times over two years…
Maxine: You start to get it.
Missy: You can take three months off and it’s still in you. It is crazy.
Maxine: It is crazy though, I still forget stuff.
Missy: There were weird things I forgot, or I second-guessed when I was saying that.
Maxine: Yeah, you have that. I feel like sometimes the first set is a little bit of like…
Missy: Cobwebs.
Celia: That crowd was so lit. It was like all the catharsis of a million rageful nights.
By the time I’m sharing this with our mostly Nashville audience, you’ll be back around in the summertime for a — don’t worry about it — football stadium show, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age. Tell me about getting pulled onto this tour. I guess this audience that might be made up of a lot of super rock and roll fans, but also some people that maybe just like know top 40 Foo Fighters [music], right? Introducing them to Mannequin Pussy, how does that feel?
Maxine: Surreal.
Missy: I mean, I would love if they were open-minded about what we’re doing with rock music. And yeah, it’s like Maxine just said, it is a surreal thing to imagine yourself playing in a football stadium. We have 30 minutes to kind of share what we create with them. So we’re definitely already starting to muse about what that set’s going to feel like. When you only have 30 minutes, it’s a really condensed opportunity to show someone who’s never seen you before who you are and what you’re about.
Maxine: Can I curse that’s gonna inevitably be bleeped out? It’s like, if they don’t like it, fuck ‘em. Like I don’t care, it’s crazy that we’re playing a stadium. That’s sick.
Celia: And the idea that so many people will come for you, like the bill is solid because you’re on it too, right? Like I want to go more because you are opening. So there will be that too, but there might be a lot of first-time Mannequin Pussy fans.
Missy: There’s a solid modern and legacy rock bill there.
Celia: And you’re doing Florence and the Machine Dates, too, right? Did I read that?
Missy: Yeah, just a week with her in May, like along the west coast. So this is the year that we get our first taste of arenas and stadiums, which is a very wild new frontier for us.
Celia: You’re ready. And you’ve got range, you can do cruise ship trivia and you can do stadiums.
Maxine: We’ll do it all at the same time, triple our pay.
Celia: Well, thank you for sharing time with me, with this guerrilla warfare journalism on the ship. You can’t escape me!
Maxine: Your microphone looks like a Hitachi.
Celia: Don’t underestimate public radio.
Festival Preview Set
Here was an Ice Cream Floats preview set aired on WNXP the morning of February 5, the day the cruise ship set off from Miami to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Can’t wait till next year!
