Perfume Genius: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Robin Hilton | June 12, 2017 — The music of Perfume Genius can be intense, shuddering with a breathtaking fragility — but also shimmying with self-assured defiance. The songs, much like frontman Mike Hadreas himself, are strong, but not hard. As he worked his way through two new tracks (“Valley,“ “Slip Away“) and one older (“Normal Song“), there were moments that were both beautiful and unnerving, in no small part because the songs are so deeply personal. Hadreas, who years ago battled addiction and a parade of inner demons before finding love and an ever-expanding confidence, wrote much of No Shape as a love letter to his boyfriend (and Perfume Genius keyboardist) Alan Wyffels. On “Valley,“ Hadreas reflects on the creeping past as he sings, “How long must we live right / before we don’t even have to try?“ On “Slip Away,“ he celebrates having emerged on the other side of darkness: “Don’t hold back, I want to break free, God is singing through your body, and I’m carried by the sound.“ But Hadreas saved the mo