Perfume Genius
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Image courtesy of nytimes.com
In a just world, the killer "Queen", the lead single from the third Perfume Genius album Too Bright (truth in advertising!), would top charts and year-end polls of music that matters right now, but in a just world Perfume Genius might also not exist.
“Queen” is all slow release swagger, rouged lips and bruised heart, with a glam strut and growled vocal. Its barely four minutes play out like a queer state of the nation and feel like an artist coming into his own. The chorused chant of “No family is safe when I sashay” is undeniable... well, genius. It's also perhaps the fifth best song on Too Bright and a heavenly pop hit, straight up.
The San Francisco date on the album tour (at the Independent, the local Corner Hotel equivalent) feels like a kind of spiritual homo-coming, a ground zero for throwing dating apps onto the metaphorical fire and sharing in some old-school queer spirit.
“Queen” is all slow release swagger, rouged lips and bruised heart, with a glam strut and growled vocal. Its barely four minutes play out like a queer state of the nation and feel like an artist coming into his own. The chorused chant of “No family is safe when I sashay” is undeniable... well, genius. It's also perhaps the fifth best song on Too Bright and a heavenly pop hit, straight up.
The San Francisco date on the album tour (at the Independent, the local Corner Hotel equivalent) feels like a kind of spiritual homo-coming, a ground zero for throwing dating apps onto the metaphorical fire and sharing in some old-school queer spirit.
Mike Hadreas stepped out from behind his one-man band keyboard refuge on Too Bright, and he steps on stage in all black smart casual and towering patent pumps and sidles up to the microphone with a look of triumph and defiance, but also like he's expecting a blow.
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His voice is still thick with the scar tissue and intimacy that have always informed his songwriting, but his free hands grasp for notes and twist into fists as he alternates between prowling the stage and pounding his keyboard. Fans of the “Hood” and “Queen” videos will know that Hadreas packs a lot of diva into a tiny package, and the live set meshes the widescreen sheen and dissonance Portishead fella Adrian Utley applied to Too Bright with Hadreas’ Rufus does Judy vibe. The expanded sonic palette recasts the already bonkers "Grid" as a dry-run for the house band in Twin Peaks 2.0 and elevates the martial squelch of "Queen" to somewhere between group healing and hysteria. Seated and alone again for a dirge-like encore of "Bright Eyes" (yep, the old Art Garfunkel song about rabbits!), Hadreas notes that he's "feeling very serious" and completely owns the song, imbuing it with the same visceral sadness as his own "Mr. Peterson" and “I Decline”. |
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"Hood", in fact, almost steals the show, its amplified menace spiraling into near disco release as the audience stamp their approval. The grin that splits Hadreas' face is priceless, and his constant tics and contortions leave no doubt that some serious soul mining goes into recreating these songs live.
The tour hits the Corner Hotel, Melbourne on 15th February; Oxford Art Factory, Sydney on 18th February; and The Brightside, Brisbane on 19th February. Sashay to the box office right now. David Branigan |
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