Under the dazzle of Perfume Genius

Veiled in frequencies that may be carelessly brushed off as just pop or synth-y, Perfume Genius’ discography propagates a holy, 21st century-level revelation from its deepest entrails. This wellspring is not merely nascent; for more than a decade now, Mike Hadreas’ music has been a liaison between his immediate experiences – mundane and mystical alike – and the processing of these into chiselled work. Even from the bleakest, most equivocal pits of his quiddity, he materialised a cogent repertoire (even when words lack in its description) with a legacy hard to equate. His imagery is liminal and subtly haunting, whereas his music is familiar and beatific. Apart from his undeniable status of authenticity, it is difficult to compartmentalise Hadreas’ music into genre or ethos. Fortunately, his trend-defying, misinterpretation-prone style stood its ground against the rites of passage into the obsolete (or, at worst, simply cringe) domains that so many of his contemporaries saw their demise in. Not only did his music survive the peaks and falls of the 2010s Tumblr era, but it progressed in unalloyed spirit all the way into our current zeitgeist of self-indulgent indie-sleaze nostalgia, more than 10 years later – and while at that, all unharmed.

The bliss and soft whimsy of his music pervades in equal measure his personality. We managed to talk to the jovial, strawberry blond genius a few hours before the music video for No Front Teeth (a collaboration with Aldous Harding) dropped on YouTube, which he described as one of his most beautiful creations up to this day. Glory, his newest album, has a release date at the end of March, and all of its teasers are slowly sidling up to us. Comprising clear references, visuals and wishes, at the very same time it strives to deconstruct all that it stands for, combating reduction to an aesthetic or a theme. As confusing as that may sound, he laid it out with discernment and wit in our conversation — read below for a deep dive into how he gratifies his disparate thoughts, his memories, wishes for reincarnation and anti-serving stance.

 Hey! I am very happy to be talking to you. How are you?

 I’m good! Last time we were supposed to do a promo trip for the record, they were closing inbound as it was during COVID and I would have gotten stuck if I came. But it feels nice, it feels very official, I feel like a real musician.

I’m really happy to be part of this initiating experience. How has your past month been?.

Well, we live in LA, so one morning I woke up in a panic at around six and saw that the evacuation zone was right next to our house. We left for a week and just kept refreshing that app to see where everything was going, and our house ended up being okay, but… it was scary. People were really taking care of each other though, and everybody was organising drives and bringing food to the firefighters. Especially it being such a big city, seeing everybody come together was nice too. It’s definitely dystopian to be out in the world, but it made me realise how we just will take care of each other and it made me less afraid of the future in general.

That’s really heartwarming, honestly. I’m glad everything is fine. Going forward, I have to admit, I am a big fan of your music. I lived my peak teenage years to the sound of “Eye in the wall” – that’s what I envision to be my life’s soundtrack around those years, all sullen and wearing full black makeup. A long time has passed since then however, and everything feels entirely different – I’m wondering how things looked then and how have they changed for you as an artist?

That project and that song in particular were really difficult to make. It started as an improvisation without form, it was just free-flowing and then shifting all of a sudden. After this improvisation, I still wanted to make a pop song out of it somehow, with a verse and a chorus. It was really maddening trying to map it out, but it ended up being one of my favourite songs that I’ve ever made. To be fair, I hate work and I hate criticism, I hate feedback, I hate difficulty. I’ve been paranoid always when I make music that if it feels hard, then it’s not going to be good, as if it’s going to lose some purity or some magic because it’s meeting resistance. Having that song be that difficult and then it being one of my favourite songs shifted how I think about creating. Also, I was very blissed out when I made that song; I was working on this dance piece with it and I was so in love with everyone who was part of it. We were rehearsing for eight hours a day, and it was utopian and cult-y, that’s what it exudes as a song for me.

As per this record, it’s not that it doesn’t have a supernatural part to it, but it also is more plain-spoken, a little more rooted. It is everything all at once, just like Ugly Season, but the latter definitely feels like documenting a very specific feeling. I mean, they all do, but that record has something acute about it. The way we made that album was also very free, because I wasn’t trying to make everything have a specific structure, even though I wanted it to be very listenable. I think of everything I do as pop music, regardless of how weird it is, but that was definitely a different type of fun.

Last month, when “It’s a mirror” just came out, I was contemplating on how the core of your music never got altered, without it ever becoming obsolete either. I often feel that within artists who make it big, there’s a general stream towards what has the best potential of becoming commercially successful. Your music feels unchanged in its progression through time. I am curious if you had a clear vision for the turnout of things? 

I don’t have any loyalty to genre or how things are supposed to be, or cohesion, but I do have a loyalty to this mechanism I found when I first started writing, which made it all feel purposeful. There’s a lot of songs where I can claim that they’re nice or that they’re interesting, but they don’t have that ingredient that makes it feel as if they spring from this inspiration, this true inspiration, you know what I mean? I feel like I’ve always been able to find it.

It’s harder each time, because I’ve done it a lot, and so often you can think “what could I possibly have left to say?” . I’ve said so many things, but I always manage to at least find something personal that taps into that. There are a lot of musicians that I love, but when it gets to their older records, you can tell that they’re just riding their own wave, which has its own magic to it, but it kind of loses access for everybody to go there with them. Which can be fun, I still  love records from people who are just going off, but I think I’m very conscious of not losing that part of it, too.

That’s a very grounded way of putting it. If we go back even more in time all the way 11 years ago, “Too Bright” was your first big commercial success. “Queen” is still colloquially the queer anthem. How did big-scale recognition impact you?

It can make you more self-conscious, but it can also be fuel at the same time. You have to reckon with it, and then find a way to use it as something fun or something that gives you more purpose.

I remember giving the second record to the label and at first they said there’s no singles on it, urging me to write at least one, and for some reason it didn’t bother me at all. I thought of it as a project, and then I proceeded with it. I wrote three songs, and they ended up being the singles, and I really liked them. There’s a way to utilise all of it, but if you’re a self-conscious person, or an anxious person, or, you know, asking yourself a lot of questions all the time about yourself, that can become strange. But then I’m also so proud of the music, and it allowed me to embody a really confident version of myself, even if the thing that I’m confident about is messy, or vulnerable, or not figured out. Especially with Queen, it materialised as a “Fuck you” to myself, a “Fuck you” to everybody, if only for four minutes, or for the whole record, or whatever it took.

Returning to the present moment, tell me more about Glory and its concept. To me, its visuals already create this insulated, hometown-y, weirdly comforting atmosphere. Am I interpreting it right?

Yes! When Cody and I were collaborating on the album cover and the videos, I was sending him my ideas, and a lot of them carried this energy as if they were scenes from movies. I wanted it to feel like it was beyond just an aesthetic. For example, I am thinking of The Piano Teacher, where one day you could watch a scene and laugh, and one day you could watch it and be devastated or disturbed by it, or sometimes all of that at the same time – I wanted Glory to be infused with that feeling. It is a hard balance to find, because it could tip over into either direction – it could become really indulgent, and self-serious, or it could be just seen as silly. The cover looks like it could be sensual, or ecstatic, or I could just be sick, or tired.

So was The Piano Teacher a big cinematic inspo?

There’s The Piano Teacher, there’s some trailers, there’s this one Polish movie… I don’t want to literally say a lot of the scenes, because they’re so inappropriate to talk about ha-ha. A lot of it was over the top, or simply absurd, but really full of feeling. Cody’s a kindred spirit, always having me flow in his own directions. I don’t think I was intending to wear really low-rise jeans, but in the end I had my pubes showing in the photos, and he pushed me to do it. Something about Cody’s vision always ends up being more reflective of me than before, even though there’s ideas I never previously imagined. It makes me really happy. And there’s a video coming out tonight  that’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever made, and it’s just… everything. I love it. 

Speaking of visual reference, where do you draw your inspiration in general?

For my last album, I had very concrete references and time periods. This one was very strange. Especially for the styling – I wanted it to be chic, but not really. The whole thing I was obsessed with was not serving, not trying to serve at all, an anti-serve, you know what I mean? Because I’m sick of serving. I think it’s kind of corny now, I don’t know how to explain it. I think things are better when they are not on point.

I get it. Maybe a bit random, but what is your best childhood memory?

My best memories? Man, I don’t think I’ve thought about that for a long time. I don’t know if it’s one of my best memories, but a story I tell a lot that is really delightful to me is from when my brother and I were playing some game, and if I lost, then I would have to do his chores for a week. But if he lost, I had all these fabric scraps in my room, and I got to dress him up, kind of like Project Runway. And he lost, so I started just draping fabric around him. He had a headband on, it was pretty late at night, and then we heard my dad get up. My brother looked so panicked. He opened the door and caught us, and my brother was so mortified. I was hysterical. My dad started yelling “Mike, what the hell is going on?” And I was just hysterically laughing, and it made me feel really powerful, because my brother was really upset. My dad was really disturbed about something so irrelevant. It made me feel like I had control over them, because I was not upset at all. I did not feel any shame, or maybe just a little. I don’t know if that’s the best memory, but it’s a resonant one.

I can really envision the atmosphere. What is your favourite city in the world?

Barcelona, because everybody’s hot, so that is always nice. I love Paris when you have someone to take you around. I feel a little overwhelmed there when I’m on my own. A lot of these are based around food for me. I love visiting Tokyo, too. I hope we get to go there on tour.

If you could reincarnate into anything, tangible or not, what would it be?

I really love slow motion. I love bad slow motion in movies, when it’s stuttery. I love when it’s really fluid.

I love when you can see all the dust moving really slow. David Lynch slow motion, where it’s sex in front of the headlights, a soft smoke machine. I guess that is not tangible, but that’s my favourite thing, and when we were doing the dance and stuff, and we could put on a drone, and everything felt really slow, time was kind of flattening or expanding or something. That’s my favourite feeling.

Wow, I love that you had that one prepared! Would you return back in time to any specific moment of your life?

I mean, when me and Alan first got together, I was so… I was so crazy.

My mom used to make fun of me, because I was just rocking back and forth. Around then is also when everything started, I got a record deal and my whole life changed. I don’t know if I would go back, because it was also very overwhelming, and I still get to feel all those things. It’s a little calmer now and less fragile in some ways, because now I know it stayed. Before then, I didn’t have a lot of things that were consistent.

I also miss being a teenager sometimes, even though that also was the worst time of my life, for sure. I don’t think I’ve ever been as morbidly depressed as I was when a teenager.

It just permeated everything. And it was all so totalising. I remember how much I loved music and movies, I was so obsessed with things, and there was something kind of magical about it. I was in my own world, but I would never go back to that time. But I kind of miss the intensity of it, the belief that my pain was the worst pain in the world, how unique I felt.

I think that’s a very relatable way of reminiscing of your teenage years. Or at least for me. Finally, what is your advice for queer fans going through existing in today’s world?

I think it really is about other people, and taking care of each other. And I think the beautiful thing about the internet and music, is that if you’re not there yet, you have proof that it exists somewhere, and it can be found somewhere, you know what I mean? And you have good proof now, too. When I was growing up, I had examples, but they were kind of gnarly sometimes. And now you have gnarly examples, and gnarly’s okay, it might be gnarly, but it’s going to be different. You also don’t have to figure everything out, and it doesn’t have to be tidy, it doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be understood by you or anyone else. And you can exist alongside any feeling. I think when you’re young, everything feels so permanent. But it’ll change. 

 <3!!! Any final words on what’s coming up next?

Well, we just started rehearsing all the songs, so I’m conceptualising the live show. I don’t want it to be an exact representation of the album artwork, but I want to be informed by it. And I want it to be theatrical, I want props, I want to hang onto something, I want to be able to climb something.I don’t know if those are final words, but that’s something I’ve been thinking about the last few days. I love playing shows now. It used to make me so nervous that I just powered through it. Now I look forward to it, it feels very cathartic and magical. I feel stupid, and it just feels like experiencing everything in a way that I don’t get to experience otherwise.