Songs with the sweet smell of success for Perfume Genius

MIKE Hadreas is gay and angry and you can hear it all on his new album. The songwriter behind electro pop project Perfume Genius has poured a lifetime of pain into the record: his preferred metaphor is of a burst dam and the tsunami of emotion it sets free.

“When [homophobic] things are said to you, in the past I would feel embarrassed and self-conscious and keep my head down. Frankly that isn’t working any more. I feel the need to stand up for myself. I wanted to write about feeling empowered,” says the 32-year-old.

The most visible manifestation of his newly cultivated combativeness is Perfume Genius’ latest single ‘Queen’ — or, more specifically, the accompanying video, a shape-shifting, gender-bending affair that manages to be both highly politicised and mind-bendingly surreal. You might not get what it’s about but you won’t forget having sat through it.

“We were given whatever we wanted on that one,” says Hadreas. “I mean, normally you ask for five six things on a video and it is explained to you that you can have maybe one. With this, we got it all — we even had three pigs and a pig wrangler.”

The new LP, Too Bright, arrives at a significant juncture in Hadreas’ career. Consisting of delicate electro pop and piano ballads, his first two Perfume Genius LPs were kindly received but did not exactly set the world aflame. Third time out, his label advised he consciously reach for a larger audience — sweeten his songs so they appealed to a more general listenership. He could understand the logic of their position and was happy to go along — at the start anyway.

“I went in and tried to write a pop record. However, I guess at a subconscious level that I maybe rebelled. I originally attempted to make something that was pop. I thought a lot about how it would be received. Almost without realising, I ended up pushing back, creating something much darker. In a way, they’ve sort of ended up pop songs anyway. They are very immediate — with my earlier material maybe you needed to sit with them and be in an intense frame of mind. This stuff hits you straight away — my label is very excited.”

Hadreas may not have crashed the charts quite yet. Still, he has accumulated some influential fans. Michael Stipe, a resident of Hadreas’ hometown of Seattle, was an early cheerleader; actor Daniel Radcliffe is also a fan.

“When you hear people saying nice things about you it feels totally surreal,” he says. “It’s great — and yet I can’t quite get my head around it.”

The Perfume Genius story has a bittersweet postscript. One of Hadreas’ early triumphs was the 2012 single ‘Hood’. In the video he dances with Arpad Miklos, a gay porn star from Hungary [the promo was banned from YouTube]. Twelve months later, Miklos was found dead in his New York apartment, apparently as a result of suicide.

“It was so sad and shocking, ” says Hadreas. “I only met him for those five hours on that set. I try not to talk about it. I don’t want to be seen as intruding on other people’s grief. It was a terrible thing though.”

Perfume Genius play the Body and Soul Stage at Electric Picnic. Too Bright, is released in September.