We’ve all had an album and/or artist that we’ve wanted to discuss on the pod. Often, as written many-a-time, the record release gods simply don’t play ball. With me and Perfume Genius, this is not the case. I’ve actually carefully avoided bringing any of Michael Hadreas’ albums to the pod. He’s mine. I don’t feel the need or the desire to share him. Of course I am joking, except that I’m not. Get your grubby little fingers of my guy.
My relationship with Perfume Genius goes back to late 2010. I had just had my first child, I had a lot of spare time. Pitchfork featured the single ‘Mr. Peterson’ (from PG’s debut album ‘Learning’) on their top tracks of the year playlist. I fell in love immediately. It was odd. It was deeply personal. It probably spoke of child protection offences. It made me cry. I felt it deeply and believed in it and of the Perfume Genius construct.
Then in 2012, PG released ‘Put Your Back N 2 It’. A 12 track, sub-33-min sophomore release. It was brutally beautiful, honest and for me, perfect. I listened to it an unhealthy amount and I still do. However, this is the album that ruined PG for me. There is no way that any album he makes will do to me what this album did. I kind of only ever want to talk about that album on the pod … but that ship has clearly sailed.
PG has since released at least 5 more studio albums including this one, Glory. The 2 albums that followed ‘Put Your Back N 2 It’, ‘Too Bright’ and ‘No Shape’ are incredible. The two that followed ‘Set My Heart …’ and ‘Ugly Season’ are both amazing albums in their own right. But none were ‘Put You Back N 2 It’ and none will be. Basically, what I am saying is, I get properly nervous when a new PG albums is inbound.
Exploring ‘Glory’
On March 28th, Glory was released, 11 tracks (thank you), 41 mins (thank you). The release, as is now common, was preceded by 3 singles, all of which were special. ‘It’s a Mirror’ is full bombastic Hadreas pop and felt similar to lead singles off Too Bright, No Shape and ‘Set My Heart …’, ‘No Front Teeth’ felt different and odd and angular, Clean Heart was, Michael in full on ‘Crooner’ mode which we’ve heard on previous work and has become something of a trademark. What was less special, is that it became clear that these were the 1st 3 tracks on the album. I don’t like this, I have a problem with this. It makes your experience with the album odd on first listen and it perhaps warns of an odd track sequencing?
Despite the album opening with the 3 singles, sequenced in order of release, the album feels like it’s perfectly put together … if you spend enough time with it and learn to understand the flow. We’ve reviewed another album that was similar recently but I can’t recall which one.
- The first ‘new’ track is track 4, ‘Me & Angel’ which is Perfume Genius in full on, traditional, piano driven big ballad mode. This will feel super familiar to PG fans and is reminiscent of some of the tracks that I adore on ‘Put Your Back N It’. The ‘angel’ motif is not new in PG songs either, one of the many little ‘easter eggs’ for those in the know. PG has this habit of writing songs that feel like fucked up hymns, with irreverent angles and beauty available for those willing to give themselves into it.
- Next up is “Left for Tomorrow’ that is an atmospheric track with haunting, wafer-thin, wispy vocals that seems to mesh with the organs and synths that provide the space filling sounds that drive the track. It’s a beautiful thing. There is a real, live, band like feel to this track, a perfectly synced jam session feel to the recording. It’s beautifully produced and instrumented and provides an amazing end to Side A.
- The start to ‘Side B’ is the track that opened this album up for me ‘Full On’. This is one of the two tracks that almost feel like they could belong on ‘Put Your Back N 2 It’. There’s a raw, stripped back energy to the track that I can’t put my finger on. It’s actually quite complex with woodwind and lucious harp plucks but there is something about how his voice is recorded that brings back memories of his 2nd album. I am here all day for US High School imagery and the line ‘I saw every quarterback crying, laid up on the grass, nodding like a violet’ is a line that you could write a whole film around when it’s set in the atmosphere of this track.
- Capezio is an odd, wonky, druggy, David Lynch movie soundtrack song. It re-introdces us to ‘Jason’, a character that has their own PG track named after them (on ‘Set My Heart …’). I feel very at home with PG when he is in this ethereal mood. I don’t think he writes and records tracks like this without first releasing more experimental and challenging albums like ‘Ugly Season’.
- Dion, returns to piano driven balladry but with a large dose of the ethereal, again, similar to tracks like ‘All Waters’ on ‘Put Your Back’ (which is synth driven not piano but still). The soundscape that accompanies the piano threatens to take over, the discordance almost boils over but never does, it resolves perfectly.
- … and it resolves and returns you to my favourite track ‘In a Row’. Yes, you’re right, its a song about being kidnapped and driven around in the boot of a car. Michael talks about the song being about seeking thrilling experiences, making poor choices. The atmosphere that he creates is both spine chilling but at the same time is utterly euphoric. Given the subject matter and his history of drug abuse, addiction and recovery, the final result is a master class in telling complex stories, in simple terms. The line ‘take me the long way round’ is a stroke of genius song writing. I love love love love love this track, the only thing I don’t like is that it only last three and a half minutes.
- The album ends with two tracks that bring the energy down a little from the euphoria of ‘taking the long way round’ a thrilling if utterly dangerous experience. ‘Hanging Out’ returns us to the (even)dark(er) side of Perfume Genius. The track is both small and massive at the same time. This and the final track Glory might be a step into weirdness too far for some. They are both beautiful but in a much more brutal and visceral way to the tracks like Angel & Me.
I think Ugly Season was PG practicing and perfecting the journey into the weird, the wonky and the odd. The end of this album makes the whole thing feel like a soundtrack to a film that we’ve not seen but exists in Michael’s head.
thisisnothappening.net 
Thanks for this beautiful write-up Joey. I know how much you love PG, and feel your trepidation in bringing this to the podcast, in the same way I did with Hot Chip and Metronomy (and especially as the albums I brought of each were not their finest work, either) but sometimes you do need to jump in and bare your soul. And given that proviso, Perfume Genius seems an apt choice for this. And in the end, you still get to talk about all of this. It always feels a pretty good gamble. Especially with music as theatrical and cinematic as this.
He’s an artist who I’ve heard you all refer to over the years, but most of all you, and so he is added to the list of performers who I feel I’ve totally missed the boat on, and I’m not sure why. I loved the book Perfume, and so it’s nice to hear that was his inspiration. There’s a literary quality to how he writes and how he constructs his music. But I come to this almost entirely cold, even though I know I’d listened to some of No Shape, though I don’t think we covered it at the time.
I approached Glory with trepidation, but also with a firm base of really enjoying the two leading singles – No Front Teeth and Mirror – but also not being sure they’d represent the whole work. I was right on that front, and I’m still trying to work that out. Because, as you’ve said, putting all singles at the start of the album is a strange thing to do. For what it’s worth, I know Hot Chip’s Freakout Release had its first 3 singles as the first 3 tracks of the album, and – much as I loved it – I’m not sure the rest of the album recovered after that odd choice, as we pointed out on the pod at the time (back on Ep 26).
They were two barnstorming tracks: accessible, interesting, but quite up front. Mirror almost felt mainstream, which was not what I expected (and Hadreas talked about trying to write a more straight-up record) and No Front Teeth was more ethereal, with Aldous Harding’s delicate vocals starting to shift things. By the time Clean Heart arrives, with its starry glockenspiel notes, you feel you’re in a different record, even as it burns brighter in the second half. And after that, it’s another experience altogether. I can’t figure out if we’re being toyed with, or it’s a clunky bit of sequencing. In fact I started to listen from track 3 a lot, and found that started to unlock things.
I can’t do it justice that you have – history wise or the feelings it evokes for you, as we all have for an artist that we love – but it does many really special things. Musically, atmospherically, lyrically, it weaves some magic threads: Me & Angel’s simplicity is stark, Left for Tomorrow switches keys, full of restrained power, but its Side B where things shift up a gear. Full On comes out of nowhere with harp and harmonies, Carpezio has this delicate falsetto that feels like it could disintegrate at any point. The album starts to feel very light and frail. Dion, like much of the record, feels steeped in grief and loss. At times its overwhelming. In A Row is yet another song from the montage / end credits / slow-motion tragedy section of a film, Hanging Out a song from the end of the world. And the title track closer is a fitting end to a second half of an album that confounded the first.
But…. and there is a but coming. For an album I’ve been listening to for well over a month and enjoyed every time, I’m still not really fully dialled in. It’s so cinematic, it almost feels emotionally distant. Not to everyone, but to me. It’s so beautiful to look at I can’t quite see beyond all that majesty. I’ve been here before of course, and perhaps some of it is the weight of your love for it, but I also expect it to click soon too. Because there’s so much astonishing stuff going on, such invention and skill its’ mesmerising at times.
I think the lyrics may be part of this. It’s all very oblique and hard to define and perhaps you can’t connect as much for it. I’ve done headphone listens, and as the words are clearer and land more, I’m none the wiser. I know the brilliant Sodajerker pod talked about this, and Hadreas admitted this was more lyrically removed, but it’s splitting hairs perhaps.
Throughout there’s that classic feel of something you’ve heard before, but you can’t really put your finger on what, and in the end you have to admit it’s a singular artist, making his own universe for us to explore. That’s a rare skill given how much everything’s been done already.
There’s the energy of many things in there, which I feel. I’m sure the pod will talk about it, but I hear everything from Vampire Weekend and Rozi Plain, to The Beatles and Blur, and even some REM.
I can easily see how you fall in love with an artist like this. I’m marvelling at the beauty but not quite gone head over heels. Yet.
Well this is a huge return to form from an artist that I adore ALMOST as much as Joey! I didn’t get on with last album Ugly Season, and I found the previous one, Set Your Heart on Fire… a bit patchy, thought it definitely some great songs on it. Though my introduction to PG was Too Bright (11 years ago!!), I think the lodestar for me has always been No Shape. That album does everything that I want a PG album to do – wow me with melodies so beautiful, I want to cry, and invite me into a very intimate – and very queer – space that feels really special.
This album feels like it’s doing the same to me, I return to it again and again and I get more out of it each time I listen. Some of the songwriting takes my breath away. He seems to be able to conjure a kind of ecstatic joy out of his melodies. I’m just listening to to Track 6, Full On, as I write this and I can literally feel it pulling at my heartstring. So magical.
However, Joey, your point about the sequencing has rather got stuck in my head. I don’t know if it was bothering me until you voiced it, but I think you may have a point – the album feels almost overly front loaded and I don’t know if that’s by design or that it was already sequenced before there was any discussion about what would be the singles. I would like to have a seen a bit more light and shade in the sequencing – the middle of the album, while being staggeringly beautiful, is quite slow paced. Chucking something No Front Teeth in there – particularly with the way it explodes into life (very reminiscent of the recent St Vincent, I thought). But nonetheless these are an exceptional set of songs, and feature a few that might be amongst the most lovely he’s ever written (Left For Tomorrow, Full On, Clean Heart).
Finally, I’d also like to touch on queerness here too in the work of PG. I think he has a way of presenting himself and his sexuality as this complex, organic whole thing that feels so celebratory, even when he’s singing about difficult stuff. I don’t think we can underestimate how important that is in the current climate. He is such a beacon for living a warts-and-all queer life and not sanitising or dressing down his act for a mythical straight audience. Even the album cover uses his body in such a bold, interesting way (amazing chat here about the visuals on his albums: https://www.wallpaper.com/art/music/perfume-genius-visual-artwork). And that video for No Front Teeth. So fucked up, filthy and subversive. It’s just glorious. I’m personally feeling quite politicised by the attacks on trans people in the UK and all LGBTQ folk in the US. These are fucking dark times. I’ve been married to a woman for a long time, but I’ve also had same sex experiences in the past. Queerness right suddenly now feels like an important act of resistance. And that’s what PG’s music is – face the world with unapologetic queer beauty. I’m here for it all day.
p.s. I saw every quarterback crying/ Folded on my lap/ And counting out the damage done.
YES YES YES! Best lyric he’s written since ‘No family is safe when I sashay’.