Perfume Genius

Panos, a good friend of this blog, has recently suggested that I cover Perfume Genius, an act that he deeply appreciates. I appreciate it as deeply, and was planning to present the act later in the year. But, as they say, there's no time like the present, so dear Panos, and the rest of our good friends (known or unknown to me), here's Perfume Genius.

Perfume Genius is Mike Hadreas. His music is a combination of the complex soundscapes of Radiohead and the inspired theatricality of Kate Bush. His lyrics are as sparse and melancholy as those of Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields).

Hadreas is of Greek descent and was born in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington on September 25, 1981. Hadreas studied painting in school and took piano lessons as a child. His mother was a special education teacher, and his parents divorced when he was a teenager.

Growing up, Hadreas was the only openly gay student at his school, and he received death threats which were not addressed by the administration. He dropped out of high school during his senior year. Two years after dropping out, he was attacked by several young men in his neighborhood. He moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn and worked as a doorman for a club in the East Village. In 2005, Hadreas returned home to Seattle and began recording music. In 2008, he set up a MySpace page under the name Perfume Genius, and thus began his music career.

Hadreas's debut album, Learning, was released on June 21, 2010, through Turnstile Records in Europe and Matador Records in the United States. Many of the tracks for Learning were recorded in Hadreas's home. The album quickly received critical acclaim. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.2.

The opening track is Learning, a song about domestic abuse. It was featured in Episode 10 of Transparent in December 2015.

Lookout, Lookout is a dark, mournful song. Here are some of the lyrics:

Guinea pig hair in a twisted mouth

Through a hole to the railway

And Brian's face down

Keep your wits

He will not be missed

He didn't have a family to begin with

Look out, look out

There are murders about

Mr Peterson was released as a single: It is about an older man seducing a 16-year-old adolescent.

Gay Angels is a transcendent tune with positive, healing lyrics:

Write To Your Brother is a short 'n' sensitive song concerning twisted family dynamics:

Perry is about a love affair with a manipulative junkie:

Attempting to re-focus after the surprise success of debut album Learning, Michael Hadreas found himself locked in limbo. “There were a few months where I was aimless, trying to write and couldn’t” he sighs, permitting a vein of exasperation to enter his voice. “Just because I was getting a little nervous – I knew I was supposed to, y’know? There were these expectations on me. I wanted to – I don’t know, I just really wanted it to be good. I was thinking too much about it so it became forced and not very genuine. I just realised how uncool I was, I kind of came to terms with that. I realised that I’m just going to make something which is really earnest and not very hip. I just started doing what I normally do.”

Initially overawed by the reception afforded to his debut album, Michael Hadreas found that he could use this audience as a means to pry open his own songwriting. “I think what I initially found hard for me to navigate was that I was thinking a lot about the people who were going to listen to what I was writing” he explains. “I was sensing myself but then I kind of realised that I can write for other people, that I can be deliberate and not be phoney. When I first started thinking about who I was writing the music for it became easier, instead of thinking about the public in general, who might hate it or who’s gonna think what I could just write it for who I wanted to write it for it became a lot easier.”

Intensely personal, Learning almost felt like peering through a keyhole into someone’s life. By way of contrast, Put Your Back In 2 It, released on February 21, 2012, is a more relaxed, confident affair. Still capable of crafting something heart-grippingly emotive, Perfume Genius has evolved to grasp hold of lush aesthetics. Partially recorded in a studio outside Bristol, Put Your Back N 2 It has an easy, un-rushed feel. “I was thinking about the kind of music I listen to before I go to bed and things that I spent a lot of time with. I kind of liked that I suppose. A little more simple, fluid and not so jarring” says the songwriter. “I listen to some more difficult music but it’s not something I listen to for years and years and years, y’know? So I was trying to make something that people could listen to for a long time.”

There’s a moment on the new album, in fact it's the very first song, where everything – voice, lyrics, arrangement, production – seem to pull together, as tight as the head of a pin. AWOL Marine ends with Michael Hadraes’ voice sucked up into the heavens; synth swirl pushing harder and harder until the whole landscape is rendered as noise. Yet while challenging, the piece has a blissful edge – melancholic, but melancholy with a beautiful serenity.

Normal Song is a song of comfort:

Take my hand

When you are scared

And I will pray

If you go back out there

Comfort the man

Help him understand

That no floating sheet

No matter how haunting

And no secret

No matter how nasty

Can poison your voice

Or keep you from joy

The song was featured in the hit show Suits in 2012, as well as in a Toyotathon commercial in December 2016.

No Tear is a Nick Cave-esque song of despair dealt with resilience:

Take Me Home is a love song with lyrics reminiscent of Jacques Brel's Ne Me Quitte Pas:

I'll be so quiet for you

Look like a child for you

Be like a shadow of a shadow,

Of a shadow for you

Dark Parts is another song meant to support the listeners in their darker moments: "But he'll never break you, baby ... I will take the dark part of your heart into my heart ".

Dirge was featured in Season 3 of How To Get Away With Murder. The song is about the death of a much loved youth:

Boys that held him dear,

Do your weeping now,

All you loved of him lies here,

Do your weeping now.

All Waters deals with some of the more everyday examples of homophobia Hadreas has encountered:

Hood, a love song in which the singer is afraid that he'll mess it up, was the promotional video for the album. It featured Hadreas and pornographic actor Arpad Miklos embracing each other, and was deemed unsafe for family viewing by YouTube. The video became somewhat infamous after Arpad Miklos, who cradles Hadreas and brushes his hair, later died in an apparent suicide.

The song was featured in "Looking: The Movie" on July 23, 2016.

Sister Song, a song about the departure of a special one, was featured in Episodes 3, 13, and the season finale of Hemlock Grove in 2013.

On an interview for Stereogum, Mike touched on the subject of self-censoring your image and behavior to avoid homophobia: "It’s hard to negotiate with yourself, too. And sometimes I know I’m doing it to myself. Sometimes nobody is looking at me or cares, and I’m kinda still somehow frightened. But then sometimes I let my guard down and then someone calls me a faggot on the street. So it’s like, “Well, wait, I guess I do need to be on guard.” It happens less and less - especially since I live in a fairly liberal place - but that’s not the case all over."

About being confronted with weirdness in the Indie Rock world: "Kind of. It’s like I’ll go into a venue and they won’t take me seriously, or think I don’t know what I want because I’m sort of impish or tiny or feminine. And that’s frustrating. And that’s almost what that song is too. I’m just as badass as anyone; my clothes are just more silken. But then I’ll meet a dudey-dude band, like the Men, and they were super nice and really fun and easy to get along with. And even going to the South, I was terrified, but it was really friendly. It’s just surprising. Then there’s some asshole in some liberal area. That’s just how it goes. I did a lot of interviews where I’d get these crazy introductions. In France I was being translated live for the radio show. It was like, “He is Perfume Genius: He is gay, he is sad, he is addicted to porn.” And I had to stand up like, “Excuse me?” The first two, yeah OK, but I’m not addicted to porn! I like that that’s their lead-in, like nothing about the music, just that I like to fuck dudes, basically."

"It’s weird. I’m proud, I want to talk about those things, to make an issue of them, but I don’t want that to sacrifice the music - like how hard I work on the songs, the lyrics - on its own. And that’s the whole fear, trying to not alienate me."

In 2013 he guested on Cate Le Bon's track I Think I Knew:

Perfume Genius' followup album, his latest so far, was released on September 23, 2014. Too Bright, co-produced by Portishead’s Adrian Utley, has garnered critical acclaim, including from Rolling Stone, which ranked it among 2014’s best albums (“shifting from theatrical indie pop one minute to pitch-black electronic music the next”), to The New Yorker, which evoked everyone from John Keats to Rufus Wainwright in its praise. Too Bright is indeed a stroke of genius: melodic, melancholic, and totally original. Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, gave the album an average score of 87, which indicates "universal acclaim". It was also Perfume Genius' first commercial hit, peaking at #77 in the UK and #83 in the US.

The opening track is I Decline: one of the most elegant rejection songs ever:

The album's most famous track is Queen, which deals with the idea of gay panic and homophobic cliches:

Don't you know your queen

Whipped

Heaving

Flower bloom at my feet

Don't you know your queen

Cracked

Peelin'

Riddled with disease

Don't you know me

No family is safe

When I sashay

Don't you know your queen

Gleaming

Wrapped in golden leaf

Don't you know me

Rank

Ragged

Skin sewn on sheets

Casing the barracks

For an ass to break and harness

Into the fold

Marry

No family is safe

When I sashay

Queen was featured in Episode 4 of Mr. Robot in July 2015.

Fool is one of his most accomplished songs:

No Good showcases the artist's pessimistic view of life:

To me love was

Always infinite

Stolen moment

At a time

A feeling only out

For a little while

And then ripped from your arms

Like a child

I carry their names

The secret shapes

And an aching parade

Around my heart

My Body was even more pessimistic:

I wear my body like a rotted peach

You can have it if you handle the stink

I'm as open as a gutted pig

On the small of every back

You'll see a picture of me

Wearing my body

My Body was featured in Season 3 of How To Get Away With Murder.

Grid was a grittier conclusion to I Decline:

A diamond

Swallowed and shit

Then swallowed again

At least we know where it's been

Grid played in Season 4, Episode 2 of Catfish.

Too Bright, a beautiful ballad, was featured in Season 2 of How To Get Away With Murder.

The album's closing track, All Along is a breakup song of sorts:

Deep down I never did feel right

Even now sometimes

That feeling is a lie

You wasted my time

I don't need your love

I don't need you to understand

I need you to listen

Mike on self-consciousness: "I think it’s impossible not to, and that’s what’s so inspiring when you see people letting that go, especially when they’re gay and you know they have same amount of weird self-awareness from when they were little as you probably did, from recognizing they were different really early on. It can make you crazy, that awareness. It makes you very aware of how you’re sitting, how you’re carrying yourself, really early. For me, I become more and more obsessed with it, to the point where it was almost like an Inception-level of awkward, constantly thinking of how I come across. To see people who have probably dealt with that saying, “Fuck it” … it’s good. That’s what I want for myself. And I do it way more now than I used to."

In 2015, Perfume Genius joined Christine and the Queens on Jonathan:

Hadreas contributed a cover of The Grateful Dead's To Lay Me Down to Day of the Dead, a charity tribute album curated and produced by members of The National and released by 4AD on May 20, 2016. Hadreas's cover was a collaboration with Sharon Van Etten. All profits from the album will help fight for AIDS / HIV and related health issues around the world through the Red Hot Organization.

On September 16, 2016 Hadreas released a cover of Elvis' Can't Help Falling in Love in collaboration with Prada. The song was featured in the ad campaign for their new fragrance.

Initially making music only for a select group of friends, Perfume Genius finds Michael Hadreas enjoying critical acclaim, playing shows around the globe. Finishing, I wonder if the demands placed on him will lead to sacrificing elements of the intimacy whch fuel the project. His opinion: “I think that’s kind of dangerous. If I got overly confident and started telling people things instead of asking them, so it would seem like ‘listen to this message I have for you’. I still don’t feel like that but I can own it and be a little more professional but still retain that intimacy”.

Keep on asking us Mike! We'll be there to engage in a fruitful and inspired musical conversation...