Mike Hadreas’ artistic life as Perfume Genius can be roughly cleaved into two sections: BD and AD, or Before and After Dance. Back in 2019, the then-38-year-old musician embarked on a completely new endeavour, performing as part of collaborative movement piece The Sun Still Burns Here with artist Kate Wallich, despite having no prior experience or formal training. Since then, his music, on-stage persona and entire means of creative expression has expanded and thrived.
His next album, 2020’s ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately’, was a bold and varied step forward that earned Hadreas the best reviews of his life as he stood, topless and unrecognisable on its cover from his tremulous early moves. 2022’s ‘Ugly Season’ was a formal release of The Sun Still Burns Here’s experimental soundtrack, and now, this week, arrives ‘Glory’: a considered, meditative record that unpacks these changes with a newfound sense of grounding and steadiness.
For Hadreas, peroxide blonde and frequently hilarious despite having only just woken up as he speaks to NME from Los Angeles, the experience completely shifted the way he saw life and his place within it. “I think what happened is, I had a new experience of myself and it shook me out of how I thought that the world worked; who I was; what I’m capable of; where art can come from,” he says. “My real life and my work life had become very disconnected. I reserved all of my confidence, my willingness to do things even though I was afraid of them, my emotions even – I reserved it all for music.”
“I’ve been really serious about [my music] and been rewarded by the fact that people are taking it seriously.”
“Then when I was at home I went into an isolated, detached zone. But something about the dance made me realise that I needed to tend to myself in every direction, and tend to other people too.” However, The Sun Still Burns Here was not without its own wobbles. “The dance was amazing but I was unhinged, it was kinda demented,” he cackles. “I fell in love with every single person on it, truly. I went to therapy immediately after, for the first time in 13 years.”
But once he’d managed to curb his burning fantasies, the need for something smaller and more stable started to manifest. “The last three years have been about [saying], how do I connect with who’s already here? Not trying to get off on old desires, but thinking about the beauty and grace and kindness that I have when I’m writing… how do I have that in my real life?” he asks. “I think this record is an attempt to force that because it’s not really a place I feel I’m in a lot. But when you make a song, it means you do have it in you because you did it for five minutes on the song, so it must be there.”
Since the release of 2010’s fragile debut ‘Learning’, Hadreas has grown Perfume Genius into one of modern music’s most treasured queer storytellers. In the last few years alone, he’s collaborated with Yeah Yeah Yeahs on their 2022 single ‘Spitting Off The Edge of the World’, enlisted A. G. Cook, Danny L Harle and more for his own ‘Immediately Remixes’ album, brought in Phoebe Bridgers on guest vocals for ‘Set My Heart…’ and now Aldous Harding on ‘Glory’ duet ‘No Front Teeth’.
A wildly diverse selection of fans and peers from across the full genre spectrum of electronic, rock, indie, folk and more, his Little Black Book speaks not only to Hadreas’ considerable talents but also the curious way in which he sees his creativity. “I don’t know why they all ask me,” he muses. “Maybe they can tell that I have a willingness to go for it? I’m down to go somewhere new, so if they have a new place and they think I would like to go there, then I’ll probably be down to go.”
Success, for Hadreas, has been a slow burn, but coming into his seventh album, his artistic currency has never been higher. It’s a strange duality with his inner life that he considers on ‘Glory’’s steely, rousing lead single ‘It’s A Mirror’: “What do I get out of being established? / I still run and hide when a man’s at the door,” begins its second verse. “I think one of the things that makes me shy in my daily life is that I’m not gonna be taken seriously because I’m little or have a different way of communicating,” he says.
“I don’t want to ignore all the horrible things that are happening, but I want to somehow move through the world while they’re going on.”
“[On that lyric], I was thinking how there’s no way that I’m gonna talk to a neighbour; it would just be too anxiety-producing. And yet I play shows and sing in front of people and I’m not terrified of that anymore. I’ve felt a sense of purpose about the job that’s made me work on that. I’ve been really serious about [my music] and been rewarded by the fact that people are taking it seriously.”
Ringing through much of ‘Glory’ is a yearning for acceptance regarding ageing and the passing of time. “So many of the songs are reckoning with dying, and dying feels like something that is going to happen. I can feel it in my body,” Hadreas nods. But within that, there’s a resolute defiance to it all that feels prescient in this time of great social flux and fear, particularly for the LGBTQIA+ population.
Shortly before Trump was re-elected, Hadreas married his long-term partner and collaborator Alan Wyffels because, as he explains, “we were afraid [that was gonna happen]”. But the current threat over the musician’s LA community looms heavy still. “Meg who’s in my band, they’re worried about their passport and we have to go on tour, and they have an X on their passport and just nobody knows,” he says.
“All of my friends are talking about getting guns and we were not having that conversation before,” he continues. “It’s because you certainly can’t trust them and they have guns, and you can’t trust in any position of power, you can’t trust the country, you can’t trust anything except the people you’re close to and your friends to keep you safe.”
Hadreas never imagined what life in his mid-forties would look like. “When I was 10, I was drawing people smoking cigarettes and I thought, ‘I’m gonna smoke cigarettes, that seems like something I would do’, and then I did it,” he laughs. “The things that I planned for were, like, doing drugs and moving to the city and smoking and going out…” But now he’s here, he’s trying to navigate his midlife in a way that feels kind and nurturing to both Perfume Genius, the thriving artist, and Mike, the everyday man.
“When you’re young, you feel like you’re going to beat it somehow, or you’re going to transcend. But there’s more beauty to accepting, and that’s what I’m trying to do,” he says. “I just want to do everything. I want to do music. I want to do my relationships. I want to do my health. I don’t want to ignore all the horrible things that are happening, but I want to somehow move through the world while they’re going on. I can’t just pick one anymore.”
Perfume Genius’ ‘Glory’ is out March 28 via Matador Records.
