Perfume Genius talks existential dread, artistic growth, and seventh album 'Glory' • Interview • DIY Magazine

Mike Hadreas has been feeling more mortal lately. “It’s partly just getting older, but also the world feels more fragile,” says the artist who records as Perfume Genius. He thinks Covid probably has something to do with it, but knows it’s not the root cause. “When you’re younger, you know you’re gonna die [some day], but you don’t feel like you’re gonna die,” says the shape-shifting singer-songwriter, who turned 43 last September. “But now, it feels physical, it feels real in your body. It’s not just an idea or concept because you have more proof of it happening. It doesn’t feel distant – because it isn’t distant.”

He describes his anxiety around death as “this buzzing thing that I can’t unpack”, not least because it keeps surprising him by coming out “sideways”. In 15 years of touring the world as Perfume Genius, the LA-based musician has never felt scared of getting on a plane – until now. “I’ve no idea why that started happening to me, but I guess it’s not normal to try reckoning with death the way I have,” he says. Thankfully, his newfound fear of flight isn’t – touch wood – insurmountable because he has a busy summer of headline shows and festival sets on both sides of the Atlantic. Before then, he’ll launch new album ‘Glory’ with an intimate gig at London’s ICA on 27th March.

When we meet today in a quiet corner of a trendy hotel near London’s Kings Cross, it feels somewhat sanctuary-like thanks to the rain lashing at the window. Mike was supposed to fly in from Amsterdam yesterday, but arrived this morning instead because his partner Alan Wyffels, a multi-instrumentalist who’s played on most of his records, picked up a nasty bout of food poisoning. Some dodgy oysters were probably to blame, though, Mike adds drily, “everyone always wants to blame the oysters, don’t they?”

In person, Mike is more playful and impish than the macabre start to our conversation might suggest. He’s enjoying the new season of The White Lotus, Mike White’s super-buzzy series about rich people unravelling at a luxury resort, but wonders if it’s as deep as some critics want it to be. “I think that you can write a thinkpiece about it, but I don’t know if it requires it,” he says sceptically, neatly pin-pricking the huge balloon of discourse that hovers over the show. “There’s some [social] commentary in there, but I don’t think that’s the driving force. I think it’s just demented and fun; it’s not really about eating the rich.”

He also has thoughts on Netflix’s now defunct teen drama Riverdale (“I’m passionate about it because it went completely off the rails!”), but it’s his own new work, ‘Glory’, that takes centre stage today. Creatively prolific since he broke through with his stunningly stark debut, 2010’s ‘Learning’, he has steadily released a new LP every two to three years. The last, 2022’s expansive chamber pop collection ‘Ugly Season’, started as the soundtrack to a modern dance piece that he created with choreographer Kate Wallich. But Mike believes ‘Glory’ is his most “collaborative” album yet because for the first time, he left room for his band members to flesh out the arrangements. Though he says he dislikes “any input regarding my lyrics” – fair enough, he’s a singer-songwriter who really digs deep – he implicitly “trusts” his band and producer Blake Mills to help him execute his musical vision.

“I feel like these songs are me trying to sort through everything.”

Blake has produced every Perfume Genius album since 2017’s ‘No Shape’ – his majestic fourth effort that’s home to the lustrous queer love song ‘Slip Away’ – while his ‘Glory’ band includes Alan and other musicians who regularly join him on tour. As such, Mike believes the album’s “central conflict between internal and external” played out in the way it was made. “Because I’ve been feeling more mortal, the last few years have been very internal [for me] and filled with worry,” he says. “Like, I’m afraid all the time that something good will be taken away from me. But that fear also makes me feel guilty and irresponsible, because it’s making me not really show up [in the moment].” Giving his band more musical input was his way of “engaging” with them. “Many of the songs are about wanting to be more present and available to the people I love, so I think I sort of did that unconsciously,” he says.

The results are cathartic, darkly beautiful and musically varied: ‘Glory’ glides from the marauding alt-rock of ‘No Front Teeth’, which features luminous vocals from folk singer Aldous Harding, to the sparse piano balladry of the title track. Mike calls it his “most directly confessional” album. When he sings “What do I get out of being established? I still run and hide when a man’s at the door,” on shimmering lead single ‘It’s a Mirror’, it’s about his own impulse to be “internal”, but also harnesses a queer home truth; any gay man who was ever bullied for being effeminate still feels a certain dread when an unknown male looms into view. Elsewhere, the lovely ‘Me & Angel’ offers a moving insight into his 15-year relationship with Wyffels. “Who am I to keep a smile from your face?” he sings, acknowledging that part of loving someone is giving them space to seek their own pleasure. “I love singing songs about Alan, but it felt different this time: way more emotional, but also way more draining,” Mike says.

Why does he think that is? “Well, when me and Alan go to couples therapy and the therapist asks how we’re feeling, Alan is like ‘blah blah blah’ – he really starts talking about it,” Mike replies. “But I just can’t. I know I’m having a lot of [feelings], but I can’t get them out. So I feel like these songs are me trying to sort through everything.” Though he knows what some are about – ‘Clean Heart’ represents his “rebellious” side – he says “a lot of stuff on the album still feels kind of murky and complicated” even as he dissects it in interviews. On ‘Me & Angel’, Hadreas seems to contemplate his own vanishing youth when he sings: “He looks like me / Or how I used to be.”

In the past, Mike has made light of getting older. In 2018, he posted on Twitter, as X was then known: “I am no longer a twink so twinks are officially over.” But on a more serious note, does he think that ageing comes with particular difficulties for queer men? After all, we’re quick to pigeonhole each other into categories like “twink” (slim and nubile), “bear” (bigger and hairier) and “dad” (older and probably more financially solvent). “Well, you have to shift, you know what I mean?” he replies. “But if that [shift] isn’t organic, or you can’t figure out how to signal it, it becomes confusing.” Mike says none of the so-called ‘gay tribes’ ever seemed to include him anyway. “My boyfriend is more traditionally masculine, and it feels like he can just put on a flannel shirt and he’s good,” he says. “I don’t feel the same, but I’ve never really felt like I understood my specific currency. I guess when I was young, I knew that [my currency] was that I was young, but still, I’ve always felt kind of on the outside.”

“I’m a homebody, but once you get me out, I want to stay out. I like being feral, I like being like a gremlin.”

In 2014, Mike gave us an all-time great outsider anthem in ‘Queen’, a spiky stiletto of a song in which he throws society’s homophobia back in its face. “No family is safe when I sashay,” he sings, like a soldier going into battle. “I wanted to weaponise all the shit that was bothering me and all the stuff I’m constantly trying to move through gracefully,” he says. “I was sick of trying to be the bigger person. I was saying: ‘Fuck you, I’m gonna kill you with the thing you hate about me.’” Mike says he taps into this combative side on every album. “A lot of each record is me trying to process or figure something out, but then a couple of songs are like: ‘I’m gonna eat somebody!’” he adds with a laugh. On ‘Glory’, he singles out gothic penultimate track ‘Hanging Out’ as such a moment, a fair assessment given lyrics that could feasibly refer to a ferocious sexual encounter or cannibalism: “I’m four on the floor in the dirt / I’m chewing his face like a hog.”

Earlier in this career, Mike was often described by journalists as “waifish” or “boyish”. Because he spoke candidly about growing up with Crohn’s disease, a chronic bowel condition that causes abdominal pain and fatigue, it was easy to perceive him as somewhat fragile, but in reality, we should probably see him as steely and resilient. After all, he didn’t build a 15-year career by succumbing to what RuPaul would characterise as his ‘inner saboteur’. “I’m most proud of my willingness to show up and do everything,” he says. “I haven’t really said ‘no’ to many things regardless of how intimidated I was or how much I thought I wouldn’t be able to do them.” Last year, he teamed with electronic duo The Knocks to record an impeccably plaintive cover of Bronski Beat’s seminal queer anthem ‘Smalltown Boy’. It’s not a song someone plays around with if doubting their own abilities.

“Regardless of how much pressure I feel and how selfish I feel obsessing over things, I kind of always just do whatever I want,” Mike continues. “[My anxiety] doesn’t affect the stuff I put out.” It hasn’t dented his sense of fun, either. “That will always be the main driving force. I’m a homebody, but once you get me out, I want to stay out. I like being feral, I like being like a gremlin. Do you know what I mean?”

‘Glory’ is out on 28th March via Matador.

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