PERFUME GENIUS
Meet The Artist + Check Out His New Album
After 10 years and five albums, Perfume Genius takes a victory lap with Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. In some ways, this new record is the ultimate success story. Mike Hadreas, who performs as Perfume Genius, created the project in 2008. A high school dropout who’d been the frequent target of homophobic threats, Hadreas channeled his experiences into MySpace music and was soon signed to kingmaker indie label Matador Records.
A decade after Hadreas’ dreamy lo-fi debut, he’s no longer recording tracks at his home in Seattle, but assembling complex arrangements full of harmonizing, layered vocals and a metric ton of synth. The result is something still dreamy, but elevated and mature. Listeners move from Hadreas considering mortality and melancholy on “Whole Life” and “Jason” (probably the highlight of this album) to floating alongside the singer in songs like Moonbend.
Though this album doesn’t have a track like Put Your Back N 2 It’s “Sister Song” or No Shape’s “Otherside” that will linger on indie radio for the next two months to two years, its understated yet persistent earworms should keep you streaming Set My Heart on Fire Immediately for a while.
“Your Body Changes Everything” considers the role our physical bodies play in relationships, a dynamic that Hadreas has explored in the past. In fact, all the themes from previous albums converge here: gender, sexuality, fear and acceptance.
The track that closes out the record, “Borrowed Light,” is the most revealing as to how far Hadreas has come since his 2010 debut. He’s learned a lot about himself, but the world is still random and cruel: “I thought the sea would make some pattern known / And swim us safely home,” he sings, only to conclude, “But there’s no secret / Just an undertow.”
Finishing a Perfume Genius album can feel emotionally draining. I listened to Set My Heart on Fire Immediately late in the evening the night before starting this review and definitely didn’t expect to return to it twice more the next day. Sometimes under water, sometimes in the clouds, the 13 songs on this record will pull you apart and build you back up.
Hadreas has spent the last decade developing and perfecting a formula that this synthy indie record delivers in spades. Here’s to ten more years of Perfume Genius and Mike Hadreas’ trademark sound.
