“Not a single motherfucker who has tried to lock me up could get the collar round my neck,” Marisa Debice sings on Mannequin Pussy’s defiant and furious “Loud Bark.” It’s a line that underscores the confrontational side of I Got Heaven, an album that acts as both a celebration of freedom and a warning shot at the oppressive forces that seek to diminish the agency of others. Broadly, though, I Got Heaven is a razor-sharp scythe aimed at fields blighted by the weaponization of religion and regressive societal trends. Dabice and her bandmates refuse to cower in the face of such limitations or outside beliefs, loudly declaring their own terms and identity. “I’m a waste of a woman / But I taste like success,” Dabice sings at one point, standing tall among a wave of tradwives and manosphere ghouls. That message of defiance in the face of tyranny will ring out loudly far beyond the end of 2024; by proudly standing alone, Mannequin Pussy made the most unifying album of the year. See our full...