#no shape

Perfume Genius – Music Hall of Williamsburg – September 17, 2024

The unfortunate truth about being alive is that joy can be evasive. But the flip side is that when it surfaces, it can be transcendent. Perfume Genius is expert at mirroring that high-low. The music of Mike Hadreas, his vocals that waver between pain and pomp, exists in that liminal space. And it’s why his live sets are so exciting, so vivacious.

On Tuesday night, for the 10th anniversary of Too Bright, PG played the album top to bottom to a sold-out crowd. Hadreas was as evocative as ever, still the perfect messenger for a record that hasn’t lost its shape in the passage of time. In a shimmery shirt-jacket, unbuttoned just so, he began with the piercing opener, “I Decline.” (“I can see for miles / The same old line / No, thanks / I decline.”)

But, overall, there was a certain lightness to the evening: After the hit “Queen,” he joked about the oddity of playing it second, when for 10 years they’d closed with it. In between a couple tracks, he whispered something to his guitarist, then turned back to the crowd, saying, “Just a little secret.” Hadreas was an alluring flirt, his body shimmying and moving lithely through the music and his coy smile never far behind. But the sex is tempered with an ear so stupendous and songs so brilliantly composed that they defy easy stereotyping. Take “My Body,” a short, dark-edged treatise that lives more in metal than pop. Or the following track, the spare piano ballad “Don’t Let Them In” that quakes with vulnerability. 

The pleasures of Perfume Genius are many, and among them were the performance of two songs Hadreas noted didn’t make it onto Too Bright. (“How?!” one might ask and/or exclaim.) Another pleasure: A closer of “Slip Away” (No Shape, 2017) into … “Queen,” again. This proved almost too much for the gentleman behind me on the rail, who could barely contain his joy, nearly taking flight into the crowd.

Tuesday proved a special night for the listeners at Music Hall, but it should be memorable for Hadreas, too. His craft not only deserves the revisit but also the celebration. I hope he shared in it with us all. —Rachel Brody | @RachelCBrody

Photos courtesy of Savannah Lauren | @savannahlaurenphoto

(Matador)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is so far the best distillation of Perfume Genius. Mike Hadreas’ songs have always centered around life as a gay man; with his first couple records, he cooed with intimacy and tenderness with minimal, soft instrumentation to accompany him. 2014′s Too Bright was where he started to take a turn for the maximal; 2017′s Blake Mills-produced No Shape was a full-on commitment to dense, headphones-listen production. His new record has it all. Hadreas sings about love and sex and memory and masculinity, while Mills, along for the ride again, enhances the baroque pop and 60′s-inspired croons of Hadreas’ compositions.

Opener “Whole Life” starts with a deep breath from Hadreas, as if he knows he’s about to do some heavy lifting, processing past and current relationships throughout Set My Heart like it’s a therapy session. Thankfully, the instruments are there for him. On immediate standout "Describe”, he no longer knows what it’s like to feel good: “No bells anymore, just my stomach rumbling / Can you describe them for me?” he asks. Mills’ chugging guitar and background slide and Hadreas’ Renaissance synths evoke different eras of music, an appropriate mirror to Hadreas’ loss of conception. Hadreas’ musical and life partner Alan Wyffels is a major presence throughout the record, and his harpsichord on “Jason” and Rhodes on closer “Borrowed Light” signal the arrival of the former’s title character, inspired by a straight man with whom Hadreas had a sexual encounter at age 23. “On The Floor” is a portrayal of all-consuming desire, and Mills here is similarly unabashed, providing warped and fried synth guitar.

Of course, Set My Heart is filled with songs of devotion, too, both real and imagined. “Give me your weight, I’m solid” alternates with “Hold me up, I’m falling down,” on “Your Body Changes Everything”, a song where Hadreas and his partner are there for each other. His staccato, flute-like synthesizers and Sam Gendel’s swaying synth drums soundtrack the oscillation of feeling. On “Nothing at All”, over distorted, guitar-like synthesizers, Hadreas promises, “The sadness you carry, it hangs like a ghost / And I’ll just tear it down and I’ll wear it like a ribbon.” And even in a hazy state on the tremolo guitar-laden “One More Try”, where Hadreas’ “remembering” is “not what it used to be”, he declares, “baby blue, I still see you.” Perhaps most moving is the imagined wartime queer love story of “Just a Touch”, bolstered by subtle strings, Mills’ slinky guitar and bass, and Jim Keltner’s steady, echoing drums.

And then there’s emotional climax “Some Dream”, one of Perfume Genius’s greatest achievements to date. It starts surreal, Hadreas alone, both physically and mentally: “Endlessly lazy and dumb / I lick the day like salt from some dream,” he sings. The song explodes into a mid-section distorted guitar and piano dirge, as he starts to gain awareness and self-awareness, eerily prescient: “And all that time spent perfecting my look / Now there’s nobody around.” Eventually the song tails off into a wash of saxophone and synths, as Hadreas sings, “All this for a song?” It’s one of those moments that takes your breath away, having just witnessed the creator question everything he’s ever done, making you realize why he sings at the beginning of the record, “Half of my whole life is gone / Let it drift and wash away.” But the songs on Set My Heart dare to sound and be hopeful, not nihilistic. The passiveness Hadreas expresses--letting love and desire do its thing--offers a respite. Set his heart on fire, and he’ll gladly let it burn.