CAMILLE VIVIER
Music
released, featuring haunting vocals layered over grinding guitar lines that eventually fade out into a low drone, blurring together in a beautiful sort of heat death. Perfume Genius wouldn’t be Perfume Genius without a healthy amount of broodThe new album from Perfume Genius revels in the power and ing, but tracks such as “On The Floor” intensity of physical connection. By Sean Maunier find him flirting with pop and Americana, bringing a welcome sense of joy and abanVERY PERFUME GENIUS ALBUM HAS LEANED TOWARDS THE AUTOBI- don. This decidedly upbeat track revels ographical, reflecting whatever his external circumstances and internal preoc- in the feeling of intensely missing a lovcupations might be at the time. For the formerly Seattle-based, recently L.A.- er’s physical presence, neatly capturing relocated Mike Hadreas, these albums are acts of self-creation more than self-reflec- both the pain and the joy of imagining a tion, not so much exploring himself as singing himself into existence. shared moment together. Set My Heart On Set My Heart on Fire, Immediately (HHHHH) turns that act of creation outwards, Fire is well-balanced though, and Hadreas finding the self in conversation with the outside world, most of all in real and imagined matches these more brash and extroverted connections with others. On this album, as in life, dissonance, harmony, struggle, and moments with quietly vulnerable ones, a joy are all bound up together. Rather than smoothing over the tension and contradic- push and pull that eventually comes to a tion between them, Hadreas, always a skillful and deliberate songwriter, thoughtfully head towards the end with “Nothing At embraces them as parts of a whole. All,” the most intense song in an album Compared to his last album, Set My Heart On Fire is a noticeably more grounded that doesn’t shy away from intensity. work. It opens in a way that calls back to No Shape, with quiet, intimate vocals over Human intimacy as described by sparse piano, but rather than exploding into a riot of instrumentation as “Otherside” did, Perfume Genius is a powerful and intense“Whole Life” shifts more smoothly, opening up into a cascade ly felt force, even as it is furtive, Click Here to of string harmonies. Midway through, Hadreas starts singing unpredictable and often fleeting. that half of his whole life is “done,” rather than “gone.” That To listen to Set My Heart On Fire, Watch “Describe” shift from a sense of loss to one of completion is subtle, but Immediately in a moment when our impossible to miss. Shedding some of the excess of No Shape allows Hadreas’ writing to relationships to our own bodies and those breathe, letting these subtleties and ambiguities sit out in the open. of others has been so abruptly turned on its Dialing back some of the excess of his previous work allows more variation to head is a fraught but rewarding experience, emerge, making for a more fluid and dynamic album that rarely loses its fire. Hadreas its bluntness and honesty feeling almost like has become more comfortable with guitars and bass, using them to great effect to permission to feel the full depth of our basic add a depth and element of dissonance to tracks like “Describe,” the first single to be longing for human contact.
Intense Perfume
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Set My Heart On Fire, Immediately will be available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music on May 15. MAY 14, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM
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