Perfume Genius albums
2010
Learning – 75%
2012
PUT YOUR BACK N2 IT – 95%
Put Your Back N2 It is an album of small pleasures. It’s a small wonder that the epic song of the album towards the end is only three and half minutes long, “Floating Spit”. Its another small wonder that there is not much more than a piano and a man’s voice on most of these songs. But the biggest small wonder is that the album means so much to me personally, and it comes from a person that could not be more different in the way we view our lives and the world around us. Mike Hadreas views the world as an introverted wonder, a shy and dark perspective on life that leaves little hope or joy. He is a pessimist at best, hopeless at worst, but he conveys his outlook through music that is among the most heartfelt I have ever heard.
Just listening to a song like “Take Me Home” is like peering into another world, a world that Hadreas knows so well. “I’ll be like a shadow of a shadow, of a shadow, for you.” He sings. Picking a favorite off the record is hard, they all express a strong sense of loss and they all do it so well that favorites only come by what mood your in. As a singer/songwriter, this is only his second album, and shows the promise of a true artist: no emotion is too private to express, and he expresses it with plenty of finesse but the humility of an average nobody who is just walking down the street. His songs also take odd detours just when you think they are being close to conventional- check the structure of “Dark Parts” or “Hood”. This album will change your outlook on life.
Best Tracks: Take Me Home, Floating Spit, Dark Parts, 17
2014
TOO BRIGHT – 87%
Perfume Genius shows a mastery over his odd brand of rock music on his 3rd record. Everything he tries works brilliantly, and he is more adventurous then ever before. “Grid” and “My Body” point to a direction of dark intensity that I hope he explores further on other records. He is still his insular self though, with opener “I Decline” and title track “Too Bright” crooning you along like nothing at all has changed. Advances are also shown in “Fool”, a song that is mostly abstract sound painting but manages to open and close with a catchy melody. These kind of tricks are just there to show off how GOOD a songwriter Hadreas actually is, and hopefully his ever expanding audience. I could see Perfume Genius conquering the airwaves someday but at the same time, pushing the boundaries for adventurous singer songwriters; the leader of this type of songs is of course “Queen”, penning the immortal line “no family is safe when I sashay”. Too Bright lives up to its title, though the title can be misleading, and it shows that he is full of so many ideas he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Best Tracks: Fool, Grid, My Body, Queen
2017
No Shape – 78%
2020
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately – 61%
This album proves Mike Hadreas is in a sort of transitional point, where what works is the upbeat disoc of “On the Floor”, the falsetto of the tender “Jason”, and the distorted guitar rock of “Describe”. These tunes work because they combine emotion with catchy melodies, which is something PG is often very good at. The other songs on the record exist, but they don’t flow as well, so for every ballad you have (“Whole Life”, “Just a Touch” with more than a touch of Mark Hollis) or dance electronica (“Your Body Changes Everything”, “Some Dream”) there is something that feels sort of lacking, not that the songs are bad on their own. “Nothing at All” stand up as some sort of deranged love song too. We just know he can do better, because we have seen it.
Best Songs: On the Floor, Jason, Describe
2022
Ugly Season – 97%
This is my favorite album by Perfume genius and i have been a fan of his for a very long time the last 10 years at least. It's fine if you don't agree, singer/songwriter Mike Hadreas seems to have gained a new legion of fans with his last two full length albums, No Shape (2017) and Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (2020). Both of those albums had their moments but were not full on "album" experiences like the meandering but excellent Too Bright (2014) and his masterwork so far Put Your Back N2 It (2012). This is Perfume Genius's second album in his career to be just about perfect, and it also shows his growth as an artist and how far he has come since PYBN2I first appeared in a solemn and more minimalist tone ten years ago. Also to be credited is master producer Blake Mills, who has the habit in bringing out the best moments of artists we works with.
This album prefers the songs to be longer and also more dense with surprise nuances and structures. He puts perhaps the most challenging tune right at track two with "Herem", a song that sends out a sort of 'S.O.S.' to anyone who hears it; it almost sounds like a baby being born and learning to communicate. "Hellbent is another awe-inspiring soundscape of electronic rhythms colliding with some sort of escalading melodic song structure. "Eye In the Wall", originally released with "Pop Song" back in 2019, is a welcome addition to PF's canon and one of his best experiments in how one song slowly evolves into another- it starts off as a vaguely Gregorian chant a la Dead Can Dance and somehow ends up as a psychedelics trance changing the rhythm completely. These 3 songs form the artistic peaks of Hadreas's new sound.
Elsewhere, PF shows his master over the more traditional pop song: the aptly named dance rhythms of "Pop Song", the aether gelatin of "Photograph" which compacts all of the albums ideas into the best cohesive song an instant classic, the orchestrated yearnings of "Teeth". Title track "Ugly Season" combines a naïve melody with a catchy Caribbean beat but ALSO includes some indecipherable lyrics and random noises in the background- truly a meaning of experimental and pop obvious to anyone who truly listens. Lyric sample: "Love is the tongue/ notice the shape/ don't look away."
Opener "Just a Room" and the lovely and delicate "Cenote" (one of my new favorite instrumentals of all time, up there with Morphine's "I Know You Part One" ) form sort of intros and epilogues to the music contained within this dense work. There is something to these songs that recalls the delicacy of a ballet from the 18th century but also the forward, progressive rock idioms of These New Puritans and Holly Herndon. Everything about Ugly Season totally works, and it's my pick for album of the year as well as one of the most open and honest portrayals of a human’s soul set to music.
Greatest Songs: Photograph, Eye in the Wall, Hellbent, Cenote, Teeth