Perfume Genius Finds Footing in the Tender Maximalism of Glory
Mike Hadreas and his band vibrantly impress his shape into the most ineffable vacuum, and his seventh album might be his most spectacular demonstration yet—as it seamlessly updates familiar Perfume Genius concepts with unflinching curiosity, revealing itself as music full of lush, challenging paradoxes.
No one can articulate the ephemeral light of loving, breathing, losing and dreaming quite as completely as Mike Hadreas, who has made music under the name Perfume Genius for 12 years, building out one of the most delicate and haunting catalogs of the 21st century. And while Hadreas’ sonic ambitions seem to multiply with each new project he works on, even the quiet, lo-fi piano vignettes that comprised 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It made clear just how elegantly Perfume Genius could balance a flame on a razor’s edge; 2014’s Too Bright cranked up the fidelity and found adventure in both form and texture, weaving a cathartic, weighted blanket; 2017’s No Shape scattered color abundantly across bursts of emotion, drums and synthesizers. Listening to Perfume Genius feels like reaching out for the arms of lost lovers, basking in the warmth of an embrace haunted by absence. Hadreas’ unique, gentle vocal cuts through any bells and whistles; you can’t help but marvel at the grace with which his touch fills up every room he’s in.
His most recent project, 2022’s Ugly Season, was a wildly abstract and experimental record, written for his ballet with Kate Wallich and mostly conceived prior to 2020’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, a more direct—yet nonetheless masterful—collection of songs that pushed the limits of what Perfume Genius could be. Whether the next body of work would continue to stack, unravel or abandon Hadreas’ most recent building blocks was anyone’s guess, but the ever-expanding force of his live band was undeniable. Through Wall of Sound levels of distortion and density, Greg Uhlmann and Meg Duffy’s guitar parts have taken the Perfume Genius live show to new heights post-COVID. Now, with producer and instrumental virtuoso Blake Mills present, guitars take on a voice of their own on Glory.
It doesn’t take long for those six strings to ring out, as opener “It’s a Mirror” kicks off with a crunchy riff and grows into a linear, R.E.M.-coded head-banger. While Mills has been sprinkling instrumentation across the Perfume Genius cannon since No Shape, the twangier shades only surfaced sporadically on cuts like “Valley” and “Describe,” making the full, crunching embrace kicking off Glory both an inevitable conclusion and an invigorating surprise. When “No Front Teeth” launches into mayhem—an overwhelming plunge into rootsy rock and roll—clanging pianos burst from the seams while drum fills propel an explosive release. It’s a sharp contrast against Aldous Harding’s delicate vocal harmonies, which coalesce into a transcendent moment of peace as she sings, “Better days, let them touch me / Let it take everything that I know.” It’s a hazy remembrance of the past and a prayer for future brightness, a melody aching with burning desire and refracted by barnyard cacophonies.
The chorus of “In a Row” is a steadfast surrender to love. Hadreas sings, “Take me the long way around / Think of all the poems I’ll get out / Choking on my spit, it’s a serious thing.” He beckons being swept off his feet yet accepts the likeliness of a mess. Swirling synthesizers and enveloping harmonies whisk off all withdrawal, and “In a Row”’s release is euphoric, as the verses tense up and parallel Hadreas’ turbulent “flopping in the trunk” and “counting every bump.”