Perfume Genius: "I've always been very serious about my music, but almost everything else I do is not serious"

The man that is Perfume Genius, Mike Hadreas, is on the promotional trail for his seventh album, the splendidly complex Glory. It’s a record that rewards repeated listening – the deeper you tread, the greater the bounty – as delightful sonic intricacies and Borges-like koans are steadily revealed.

Thankfully, Mike is great company – incredibly well-mannered, astute, generous with this time, and willing to reveal the mysteries behind his creative process. Or at least attempt to – like I say, it’s complex…

The album sleeve is in itself, an enigma; one which includes a large, framed photograph of the poet, playwright and key Hadreas influence, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I perceive it as a Norman Rockwell-style evocative image of self-imposed house arrest.

“It’s a demented traditional scene presented in an unhinged way, I guess,” laughs Mike. “I love the art, and how the cover has so many little ingredients. There’s some that are really meaningful – personal paintings I made in the room and Diet Coke, which is very, very close to me! But then some of it is just absurd, like the Italian flag tape that’s in every single photo. I love how all those things are mixed together, because that’s how I feel most of the time: just a jumble of everything.”

Glory cover art.

Glory encapsulates the dreaded, treacherous cloak of anxiety rather well – too well, perhaps, in that the listener realises just how much the artist has suffered for their art. Later, we share a mutual appreciation for the fight or flight aspect of horror movies. Mike talks about “Having my anxiety mirrored outside of me, instead of just, like, this ambient buzz.” It is a line which seems to succinctly describe the album.

KIDNAP VICTIM

In previous interviews, Mike has referred to Glory as his most collaborative record. He tells me that, writing the songs, he was consciously making more room for his band, for long-time producer Blake Mills and for ever-present collaborator, his husband Alan Wyffels. Listening to it, I formed the sense that the songs were created from the ground up, with Hadreas creating a tender framework, which his musicians later layered with a raucous subterranean sound.

"All the demos for this record were just piano and vocal and maybe some harmony,” Mike reflects. “On the last few records, the demos were a lot more formed – they had an aesthetic to them, or a sonic world that I had envisioned. This was more just the melody, the chords and some of the lyrics. Even though I write in gibberish, they were still coming out really wordy, in a plain-spoken way. I knew they were about really complicated things that are universal. It’s this mix of something very simple, and something that’s been true for a long time, like the fear of dying!”

I’m no spring chicken and was reared in Irish Catholicm, so I get the flavour. But let’s delve further into the standout track, ‘Left For Tomorrow’ – what a beautifully intricate song!

“That’s probably my favourite on the record,” Mike replies. “Originally, I wanted it to have a bright melody and a really warm, life-affirming quality, but I’d let it ignore pain. That didn’t feel right, so I changed the lyrics to something that felt closer to me, which is anticipating losing my dog, or my mom, or someone that is such a big keeper of my heart. Like, how could I survive it?

“The last few years I’ve been really worried about having a feeling that is so overwhelming, that I’m not going to be able to cope. But to the point where, then, I don’t engage with any of the people that I’m worried about leaving me. So, even though I’m constantly worried about something happening to them, and how much I love them, I don’t have the lights on in the room and I’m not calling anybody!”

He laughs and I tell Mike it’s his sense of humour that will see him through. That searing wit is wildly evidenced on ‘In A Row’, in which a kidnap victim looks forward to the creative inspiration that the experience will afford. It’s a song which wonderfully lampoons the suffering-for-your-art trope.

“Those things have felt very separate,” he grins. “I’ve always been very serious about my music, but almost everything else I do is not serious. But I couldn’t figure out how to make those things feel the same.

They all seem to come from the same place, but I couldn’t figure out how to unite them. And I also thought if they were mixed together, that people wouldn’t value either one, or that they would cancel each other out.”

Of course, people do suffer for their art.

“I didn’t make my first record until I got sober and healthy, because then I could literally commit to making something,” he says. “I was healthy enough to stay the whole time and finish a song. When I was living in New York and doing a lot of drugs, and going out, I felt very much like I was an artist, but I made zero art.”

It’s a familiar story. Everyone in Ireland has a book in them – but only a few of them ever get written!

“A lot of my songs are informed by how dark that got,” he adds. “But I don’t know if I needed it, to make something equally as dark. I really don’t think you need to go through that. Especially since during the first record I wrote, I was the most contented I’d been in a really long time – and yet the songs came out really melancholy or disturbing, or whatever.”

In suggesting that ageing is not a tragedy, the overall narrative of Glory seems to run counter to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s conceit that there is no second act in American lives.

“In a lot of ways,” Mike says, “as I’ve gotten older, there’s so much that I don’t care about anymore. I literally don’t have the energy for the things that I have been railing or rebelling against. But then there’s old stuff that’s been around way too long – why can I not set these ideas that were formed when I was seven, free? Why do I think this situation is going to turn out the same?

“It’s this weird mix,” he continues, “of feeling more mortal. Every time I see my parents, they seem older in a way that’s new. It feels it’s in my body now – like dying was an idea for so long, but it’s not going to happen to you. And then it becomes more of an idea, a concept, that very much feels true.”

HEARTBREAKING PART

In his press release, PG states that the central conflict of the record is the back and forth between the internal and external. Does he mean a battle between Self and Anti-Self?

“I think it’s that,” he agrees, “and then it’s also just literally between being in my house and outside my house. You know, especially now, it feels strange to be kind of obsessed with existentially trying to figure things out, or get over things, when there’s a lot going on beyond you too. But how do you reckon with all the things you need to reckon with, and come to some form of acceptance inside? And how do you not ignore the things that you need to pay attention to, but then not be bowled over by them, so you can show up to everything you need to?”

The closing title-track feels triumphant.

“Yeah,” Mike nods. “I don’t know if it’s bittersweet, but there’s a heartbreaking part of accepting things that are inevitable, although there’s a really beautiful part about it too. You know, those things kind of live alongside each other. All the songs are like little prayers to try to access the grace of that, and the harmony of those things.

“I don’t think I have access to that most of the time. But making a song about it reminds me that it’s in there, because I did it for five minutes, or however long the song is. A lot of these songs make me emotional, because I really want what the songs have.”

• Glory is out now.