PERFUME GENIUS

Mike Hadreas — aka Perfume Genius — returns with a new album that, like the man himself, isn’t afraid to be all things at once

Mike Hadreas’s new album has a rebellious streak — we smell a hit

Under the gloriously evocative pseudonym Perfume Genius, Mike Hadreas has been at the forefront of queer music for a decade, evolving from making lo- fi, wistful ballads to gut- punching, rock- tinged anthems — all telling of a queer experience that’s simultaneously specific and universal. Hadreas, now 39, is back with new album Set My Heart On Fire Immediately — a title that feels all the more appropriate in these doomsday- esque times. His fifth record follows 2017’ s No Shape, which saw him partly shed his “sad boy” image and move towards a more jubilant sound, earning critical acclaim to complement the high scores from music authority Pitchfork for his previous three releases.

Since No Shape, Hadreas and his partner ( and musical collaborator, Alan Wyffels) have exchanged their life in rural Tacoma for a more community- orientated existence in Los Angeles – though Hadreas isn’t in it for the beach lifestyle. “We’d spent a decent amount of time here before moving, and I got to see how kind of haunting and strange LA is,” he says over the phone, after a planned press visit to the UK was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s not just that American beach thing that I don’t really respond to, I’m much more into the trashier, strip mall- y part of LA, and I love that those exist together.”

He says the decision to move from their “supremely cosy” home in Tacoma was based on a desire to “go out and be in the world more”, and Hadreas has found a sense of community easier to come by in LA — helped in part by the temperate weather.

Having released his debut album, Learning, in 2010, Hadreas is well versed in the art of making explicitly queer music, using it both to exorcise his demons and empower other

LGBTQ+ people. His 2014 track Queen is a blistering anthem for queer pride, as he sings No family is safe / When I sashay.

On a personal level, his tender cover of Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling In Love was played as my friend walked down the aisle to marry his husband last year, while, more recently, his dulcet tones soundtracked my latest break- up.

There’s truly a song for all occasions.

Having laid the groundwork for other queer musicians to own their identity and sexuality in their music, Hadreas says there’s a kind of kinship among them now ( he mentions Mykki

Blanco, King Princess and serpentwithfeet, in particular), with social media making it easier to distribute material and build a following. “Nobody’s dying to give gay and queer people opportunities — unless it’s Pride month or whatever,” he says, scornfully. “We have to help each other, and champion each other.”

As the new record swells between the murky roar of lead single Describe to the synth- pop of On The Floor ( both with self- directed music videos), Hadreas also finds himself veering from one extreme to the other, sometimes even embodying both at the same time — and revelling in the rebellion.

It’s been a tumultuous few years since your last record; how much has that fed into the new music?

I think sometimes you know how it’s affecting you and sometimes you don’t. I definitely feel like it’s shaken me up and made me reevaluate what’s important to me, what I desire and what I can do for other people, too. For years, my partner and I have been very solitary. I mean, we would go out in the world, but in some ways we were kind of removed. Just over the last year and a half, I’ve really started craving connection and community and, you know, being tender to relationships that I already have and fostering new ones. I think with how things are going, it feels even more important. I feel like we’re going to have to protect each other, because it’s not really going to happen for us.

Last time we spoke to you, you mentioned being scared that settling down might impact your creativity and lead to boring music…

I think that it was almost more that it’d feel like I was kind of retreating, or that I’d simplify and simplify until I was basically just lying down. Now I feel a little more wild, I guess. I feel more creative, too. There’s some fun parts that I feel right now, and some really confusing, weird parts that I can’t even really explain. I feel like the whole world is complicated, too, so that’s not really helping; everybody feels sort of unhinged and freaked out. It’s like when animals know an earthquake is gonna happen and they just start like moaning and freaking out. Everybody’s doing that right now.

[ Poet] Ocean Vuong has written an impression of the new record, and he uses the phrase “a world burning at the edges” to describe where we are right now. Does that reflect how you see things? Do you have a mission statement for the album?

Yeah, I loved it. It really was important to me what [ Ocean] wrote, I really deeply felt it. Essentially, the reason I wrote the songs is because I don’t know how to talk about those things otherwise, and sometimes you don’t know what the themes tying everything together are until after it’s done. I don’t like to have this overarching vision in the beginning because that can be paralysing. I just try to open myself up to whatever spiritual or magical thing is around, and then as [ the record] is growing, you start to see what it’s about. With this one, I’ve thought a lot about connections and relationships I’ve had, ones that I want to have, and what I have now. On a technical level, I wanted to write songs that I felt people could carry around for a long time. A lot of the things that I listen to are very American dude- fronted, which has never really felt inclusive to me. If there was an element of queerness, then it had to be between the lines, [ it] couldn’t be explicit. And my writing, singing in this way without changing pronouns or dialogue, is very explicit, I guess.

The visuals for the new album are quite “masc- leaning”. Are they part of that idea?

Yeah, I was just thinking about classic “dude” archetypes and hypermasculine presentation. I wanted the visuals to have a nostalgic lens, the feeling of something classic, but then also something that feels kind of alien — like it’s hyper- masculine but clearly there’s something a little off about it.

Have you felt that that world of masculinity has been off limits to you, as a queer person?

I mean, I feel very masculine and feminine in extremes at the exact same time. It’s not like a scale where one goes up and one goes down,

“Nobody’s dying to give gay and queer people opportunities — unless it’s Pride month or whatever”

which is what I thought because I’d been taught that. I feel bratty sometimes to resent what people think of me and what people take from me. My whole life has been that, and when I first started doing interviews, they were always writing about how it looked like I was on the verge of tears all the time. I’ve definitely been on the verge of tears a lot in my life, but not during those interviews. It was important for me to rally against that and to lean into parts of myself that traditionally have been ragged on and shit on, and to find power in that. Essentially, I kind of always do whatever I want, and so this is how I’m presenting right now — it just feels closer to me. I like being rebellious in my music, how I present and my performance, but it needs to be just the right amount of angst; it has to have some sort of purpose.

You spoke about the challenge of creating something “heartwarming or triumphant” with No Shape when we interviewed you last. Do you think this one has those elements as well?

Sometimes. But I also think some of the songs are very sad — especially the last song. It’s probably one of the most bleak songs I’ve written, because it’s very close to a specific kind of sadness that I am carrying around right now. I’ve always felt like it’s unbelievably difficult to create something genuinely heartwarming, because it can so easily veer into corniness. And those things are usually not championed as brave or revolutionary. Usually, the more disturbing or darker stuff is what everybody thinks is genius or brilliant. If you share something warm that resonates,

I think that that’s cool, because people have been trying to do that for such a long time.

The first line of the new album is “half of my whole life is gone”. You’re 39 now; do you feel like you’ve hit middle age? Are you comfortable with that?

I think I am because, essentially, I really believe that you can completely change. All my life, I’ve been told that people don’t change — their circumstances can and maybe they can get a little better, but they can’t inherently change… and I just don’t fucking believe that. With that song, Whole Life, I was just thinking about the idea of, what if I didn’t carry around all this stuff any more? What if I just completely let it go? What if I forgave everything and forgave myself? What if I just turned around and started walking in a different direction? And I don’t see why you can’t do that. You know, I don’t mean being disrespectful to your past, but just keeping the good and leaving the bad — which is super simple and not revolutionary at all, but it always feels like it.

Do you feel like a very different person to who you were 10 years ago?

Yeah. I do. I think I was so focused on making sure that I was being responsible and healthy, and doing everything that I was supposed to do, taking care of myself and, as much as I could, of everyone else that needed me to, that I kind of hid from the world a little bit as much as I could because it took so much out of me to do all that. When I had time, between tours or between records or between things that were really anxiety- producing, I was just gone, I was fully checked- out. Now, I don’t want to check out. I want to do all this and feel more alive in between. That’s made me reevaluate what I actually want. I was just kind of building a nest and thinking, the longer I do this, the better my sheets and blankets will get. Now, my priorities are shifting — which is kind of embarrassing to admit — but I just want people. I want community, I want love, I want to be out.

You came out at a young age, but I wondered when you grew to feel comfortable within your sexuality? Was music a big part of that?

I think being queer is just an inherently lonely thing. Hopefully, less so now that you can find people online and have some idea that things aren’t always going to be how they are. All I did all day was look for something to make me feel less lonely, to find someone that felt similarly, but you’re carrying around so much shame and confusion… I listened to music a lot, just to know that the world outside of where I was growing up was different and that there were weird people out there, and there were people making stuff. All this shit that I’d been throwing around all the time that made me feel like I’m on the outside… I mean, just being 15, you automatically feel like that, but then if you have the added element of being queer and relatively weird, it can compound itself. I listened to Liz Phair a lot. Hearing her sing about sex, which was basically the core thing everybody told me was the nastiest and most shameful part of who I was, even though I had never had it before — I wasn’t even close, you know? But I knew that that’s what everybody thought was wrong with me, and she sang about sex in such an unapologetic, empowered, filthy way, and it really blew my mind when I heard it. Listening to her music just felt so naughty, but also really powerfully liberating internally.

You once said that you thought you’d grow up to be a woman. Do you feel comfortably cisgender, or do terms like gender- fluid and non- binary carry weight for you, within your own identity?

I don’t know. I’m gonna be honest with you, I have no idea. I’m sort of done trying to figure it out. Maybe I will, but I’m not worried about it right now.

You told us last time that you had a strong feeling you were going to meet your idol, Björk. Did that come to pass?

Really?! I didn’t meet her but she was at my last show in New York and I saw her hat. I didn’t want to meet her, to be honest. I think I could have met her, but I was too… I just couldn’t, I just didn’t want to, I was too nervous. I’m ready now.