Music: Perfume Genius; Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett; Mr Twin Sister
Seattle-based solo artist Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, unfurls his new album, Too Bright, with all the stately grace of a funeral procession.
Too Bright
Matador
Seattle-based solo artist Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, unfurls his new album, Too Bright, with all the stately grace of a funeral procession. One rich dirge after another, it’s the campiest funeral in the world. “Don’t you know your queen?/Cracked, peeling/Riddled with disease – don’t you know me?/ No family is safe, when I sashay,” he sings on Queen, the album’s first single.
For Perfume Genius, the steely struggle of being queer in the modern world is still very much alive. On Queen, Hadreas brandishes himself as both saviour and threat. He’s the pervert next door and the oracle at Delphi, swaying in rapt prophesy. The concerns of Too Bright are big and haunted and personal: who am I?
Am I worth living? Can there be beauty in ugliness?
Too Bright personifies anger, irreverence, and a cruel fascination with the grotesque that reminds me of Francis Bacon: “I wear my body like a rotted peach/You can have it if you handle the stink/I’m as open as a gutted pig.”
Too Bright makes a powerful statement bound to stick with you.
