Les Nuits: Perfume Genius

Nobody sounds more fragile and brittle than Mike Hadreas alias Perfume Genius. Like a boxer with velvet gloves, he beats off the demons with gentle piano strokes. “You don’t need loud guitars to be strong.”

“No, it’s fine, thanks. I’m warm enough.” On the terrasse of a Brussels hotel, blankets are on offer to those braving a chilly spring day. Hadreas likes sitting outside, because then he can smoke. He is wearing a (fake) fur jacket, Doc Martins in a Dalmatian print, and red lipstick. The twenty-something American is openly gay, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely at ease with it. For a long time, his life was a struggle, for recognition and to find a direction. After studying painting, he moved from Seattle to New York, hoping to make it as an artist; instead, however, he threw himself into the local nightlife and became addicted to alcohol and heroin. He was producing nothing and his self-image hit rock bottom; he was an emotional wreck. With his tail between his legs, he went home to his mother, kicked his habits, and poured his heart out in disconcertingly honest, raw piano songs that, two years ago, he put together
on the minimalist gem Learning.

His second album, Put Your Back n 2 It, is marginally less fragile and exhibitionistic, but the stories he serves up are still often bleak and grey. “17”, for example, could be read as a gay man’s suicide note; “Floating Spit” is about a near-death experience after an overdose; and “AWOL Marine” describes the despair, demoralisation, and emotional indifference that accompany addiction. “I wrote that one when I came across a video with home-made gay porn.” Hadreas laughs shyly. “It was kinda creepy.” But some thin rays of sunshine have penetrated his world. You can find those, above all, in the music in which he wraps his dark thoughts. Consolatory hymns as lifebuoys in a hostile outside world.

With an album title like that you expect a burly black rapper. But that’s not you.
Mike Hadreas: [laughs] My music is quite sensitive and quiet, gentle and wimpy, but at the same time I think it’s badass too. To come across strong, you don’t really have to stand yelling into a microphone with some loud guitars. But that title is also just a little joke, to make things a bit lighter. The music is already so serious.
Are your songs more serious than you are?
Hadreas: The borderline with being funny is really thin. Tragic and hilarious are close to each other, after all? From which you might conclude that I’m manic- depressive, but I don’t think I am. [laughs] If all day long I was the person whose contours are outlined in my lyrics, I wouldn’t survive. Which is why I do keep some depressing stuff to myself. I don’t need to pour my heart out non-stop.
With your first album you distributed photographs with a beat-up face, but your smile hadn’t disappeared.
Hadreas: I like grinning in the face of something terrible happening. It doesn’t have to be a life-ending occurrence.
When you look into the mirror, what kind of person do you see there?
Hadreas: I try not to look for too long, or at least not very hard. That’s why I love making music: in that, I have control over what I do and say. In my day-to-day life I’m not so hopeful; I’m not as kind to myself as I am in writing. But I am proud of myself, alright, that I don’t only produce solemn, weirdly morose stuff like I sometimes feel. It is enjoyable to write as if I have a goal in my life.
You studied painting, without finishing the course. What drove you to music?
Hadreas: Music was always what I really wanted to do. But painting and writing stories were easier, perhaps because I listened so intensively to music that it was difficult to take on the competition in it. You’re always going to make comparisons, after all, so the threshold is higher with something you know a lot about. You might start censoring yourself. I also had little confidence in myself as a musician. It took a long time to get over that fear, to be satisfied with my own music.

Talking about other music: there is a Twin Peaks mood about some of the songs.
Hadreas: David Lynch was my first encounter with something dark and moody. I went to the cinemas with my father to see Lost Highway when I was young. My dad kept holding his hand in front of my eyes, but I could peep through. Afterwards I lied to him and told him I thought the film was horrible. But I found out who made it and who had done the soundtrack.
The obsession has never left me.
In “Normal Song”, on the other hand, you sound like a fragile Paul Simon...
Hadreas: ...and not like Art Garfunkel? That I really would take as a compliment. [giggles] I was obsessed with “Bright Eyes” for a long time.
The music sounds pure and delicate again, but some of the songs are more fleshed out. “Hood” bursts open as full-blooded pop.
Hadreas: When I write about something disturbing I want to convince myself that it’s OK, that there is beauty in it. That something good can be got out of it. Sometimes it is as if the music wants to heal the words, or tries to put soul into something that didn’t have it.
Do you write your songs for yourself, or do you primarily want to share your thoughts with other people?
Hadreas: Writing songs can be very egotistical, but I never have the feeling that I want to make something that is purely for myself. After the first album lots of people sent me letters. I started to correspond with them and became friends on Facebook. When I was writing the new numbers, I thought of those letter-writers. I wanted to write songs that would be comforting to them.
At the Botanique last year you came across as very shy.
Hadreas: I still am, but I have become more overt; I’m not afraid to sing louder. We’ve just toured with Beirut; that was a great learning process. I have learned to do more to convince people. I hope I bucked up a little bit more.

You dug up Neil Young’s “Helpless” at that show. “This one I play for myself,” you said.
Hadreas: Well, that was the first time I was called back twice for encores by an audience. That was super; that concert is still one of my favourite shows ever. Anyway, I ran out of songs, and I often used to play “Helpless” when I was alone at the piano at home. It comforts me.
Because of your thin, wispy voice you are sometimes compared to Neil Young. Another name that is often mentioned is Antony Hegarty. With which of the two would you like to work in a studio for one day?
Hadreas: Neil Young. Sorry, Antony. [laughs] Antony is very dreamy; he does a lot of talking about the edges of things. Neil Young is more straightforward, more personal. That is what I find good about his music and what I’m trying to do too. I guess I would prefer to go for a mentorship. He could teach me a lot, although I doubt if he would want to. [laughs]

Perfume Genius
16/5 • 20.30 (+ Cate Le Bon), SOLD OUT!
botanique Koningsstraat 236 rue Royale, Sint-Joost-ten-Node/Saint-Josse-ten-Noode,
02-218.37.32, info@botanique.be, www.botanique.be