On the eve of his seventh album Glory, Perfume Genius is preoccupied. He’s fixated on the things anyone with a wandering, creative and often self-destructive mind fixate on: his image, his body and the pervasive fear that the people he loves will die. That’s not to say Glory is melancholic and ruminative. Rather, it’s an elastic, open-hearted record that’s refreshingly more intent on flirting with life’s hardest questions than answering them.
Perfume Genius, the stage name of Michael Hadreas, has never balked away from discomfort, but on Glory he’s waved the white flag to thought. In an era where we’re all bogged down by a relentless news cycle, environmental calamities, and bouts of solipsism, it feels impossible to think our way out of despair. In the album’s first track, “It’s a Mirror,” Hadreas muses, “Can I get off without reliving history/ And let every echo just sing to itself?” It’s a cheeky acknowledgement that we can’t necessarily control what courses through our brains, but we can let noise just be noise.
“A lot of the songs are kind of like exposure therapy. It’s at least attempting to feel more as opposed to just thinking,” Hadreas tells PAPER. “It’s trying to actually go towards a realized version instead of conceptual.” Hadreas, who worked on the album with producer Blake Mills (who has produced every Perfume Genius album since No Shape) and creative partner and husband Alan Wyffels, does exactly that. Glory sees the artist at his most settled amidst the chaos.
Perfume Genius sat down with PAPER to talk about creative reinvention, the epic music video for the single “No Front Teeth” featuring Aldous Harding and his love for The Beast, the epic sci-fi movie from French provocateur Bertrand Bonello.
Why, with this whole album, did you make the decision to go blondish?
It’s a multi-part thing. Part of it was like — I was at home and I knew how extroverted I was going to have to be to do all this stuff around the record. I needed to get in some mindset where I’m out. And dyeing my hair was immediately a step towards that. It’s fake. I like that it was a performance of my hair. My mom is a redhead, and I was born with red hair so it felt personal too. I liked that juxtaposition, I guess. But the spray tan, I don’t have it now, but I just did an interview where I talked about all the [album] covers. It’s hard to articulate. I guess it’s like talking about the music. Maybe if I went to therapy with somebody for seven hours they could help me unpack why I did all of the things I did. I have no idea. I just think I needed to have a spray for the record. And then Cody [Critcheloe] was like, “Yeah, and it should be really, really intense and we should show the tan line.” And it just ramps up from there. But as far as a really meaningful reason, maybe I’ll know in a year, or maybe there isn’t one.
That’s also leading into something I wanted to talk about in general with this album. Knowing that you’re going to have to be public-facing in this way, is it easier to be a character each cycle of this? Is the performance aspect of it a shield against public scrutiny or attention?
It definitely feels like that. But what’s strange about it is, you know — my instinct is to not leave the house. I get anxious and am like, being at a party sounds horrible. But then when I go to a party I’m like, this is fun! I don’t want to leave. I get really into it. And performing and all this stuff is the same. I dread it. I get really in my head. I’m like oh god, how am I going to do that all again? Then I start doing it and am like, I’m kind of into this. We got the pictures back, and I was like, oh my god, these are incredible. I’m like let’s fucking go. But each side never fully leaves. It’s not like I fully click into each one. They exist in varying degrees all the time. And weirdly you end up feeling more like yourself inside all this dressing up.
People talk, especially in terms of pop music, about the necessity of reinvention. And there’s the framing of reinvention. I think people can be cynical about it and talk about it like it’s some sort of attention-grabbing ploy. If you don’t constantly change your sound or your look people will get bored of you. I don’t know if anyone thinks about it from an artist’s perspective and how that frees an artist instead of trapping them.
Even though I talk about being afraid or something, it also feels really necessary that I am uncomfortable in all of it for it to be good. I don’t mind repeating it if it feels inspired in some way but there’s some mechanism in me where I’m like this is the next layer of something. I’m not sacred about what that has to be. If I wanted to just dress and it be exactly like last time and that felt like what I was supposed to do then I would do it. And it allows it to be exploratory again. You find new things. There are new layers to go to. And the riskiness of it helps everything. Also, it helps you frame it all as an era. And it helps me psyche myself up for it.
What era is this for you?
I don’t know. This one. If there is a mission statement, energetically, it’s trying to unite everything. Not have it feel like such an extreme A to B. The music, I’ve always been very, very serious about it. This is high art. We are going in, you know what I mean? It’s felt stuffy in a way that I like. It makes me really proud that I feel so smart when I’m writing, and I feel very taken seriously. And I want to be taken seriously. But I feel like I’m less concerned with that now. And I want the music to have more information included because I’m not afraid it’s going to cancel itself out. I can wink, or it can be more about who I am as a person. It can be more inside of everything, which is relieving in some ways because then it’s more me. But it’s also scarier because it feels more vulnerable. Also, how do you be more you? If that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s impossible. I was supposed to do a press thing where I was supposed to go say something really poignant for 20 minutes. And then I was like, the more I think about saying something poignant the less poignant it’s going to be. Or if I have a meeting and someone’s like, “You’re so funny and weird and all the stuff we’re going to do for promo should be more funny and weird.” I’m like okay, but I think if I think too hard about being funny and weird it won’t be any of those things.
That’s something I loved about the album. It’s almost the antithesis of this process, where I’m asking you to distill all of these things into statements or ideas that are not even super conscious all the time. In so many of the songs there are these questioning lyrics and to me they seem more like questions to yourself. It feels like a process of thinking and how to navigate thought. I was wondering if that was something that was conscious to you as you were writing? Like, I’m going to make an album about my thoughts and the things that come in and out of my brain. The wrestling between the noise and the peace.
Yeah. I think it’s really freeing. A lot of those songs aren’t the result of me figuring it out and then sharing the result.
The music almost feels anti-figuring it out. Like, how do we sit with the noise?
That in itself becomes really relieving. Because a lot of thoughts are just like an ambient weight on you that I’m constantly trying to soothe or figure out or unpack. But it feels un-unpackable. There’s no way around it being confusing. At least I’m incapable of reckoning with this thing fully. And so, it’s relieving for that to be intact in the sharing of it. I think that does allow it to dissipate a little bit. Not the thing itself, but your obsession with trying to figure things out.
It’s like how people say the only way to manage thoughts is to actually not fight them or push them away or indulge them. Just acknowledge them. Is the music acknowledging the workings of your brain without deciding that I’m going to change something or address it or fight it? This whole project feels like one intrusive thought where it’s you just expressing those and how they manifest in your brain without necessarily needing to resolve anything.
That is very maddening to me. Intrusive thoughts are very real to me. I have those. But I intellectually recognize them as intrusive thoughts. It’s not like I’m being fully piloted by them, but I also know that I am. The older I get the more I realize that I’m just in the throes of it. I think behaviorally I am, but I also have this understanding that, Oh, maybe this feeling is just fake. Or maybe it’s not real even if I’m feeling it so deeply. I still, 90% of the time, act solely based on it. That has also been really heartbreaking because I’m not going to think my way out of this thing. The solution is not just spiraling at home. So why am I insisting on doing that? And why am I so unwilling to move towards something that’s actually been proven to help me? Which is to leave the house, or talk to people, or exercise. But then beyond my own personal problems, the earth is on fire. We had an earthquake the other day, and I was feeling very cozy on my couch. I was like, oh everything’s okay. I had my dog and was playing Elden Ring. I was feeling cozy. And then the earthquake happens, and it’s like, Oh, I’m going to die. Alan’s gonna die. My dog’s going to die. People are dying.
In the two music videos you’ve given us, there are both gestures at the end that are playing out your death. You’re deepthroating a gun and you’re deepthroating a gasoline pump and lighting yourself on fire. I feel like it’s one of the more common intrusive thoughts, like when you’re driving and you know you can just swerve and do something dangerous. It’s not totally morbid, but there are just things that come up in our brains because that’s how we all are. I was wondering if those images in the videos were versions of those thoughts?
When I would do mushrooms I would think about dying and just laugh and laugh and laugh. I would think about climate change and look around. Like one time at the park there was a tree that was just burnt, and I was like, Ahahaha. Laughing and laughing about it. I think because it just is. I wanted that to be in the album too. I wanted everything to be in there. Because it feels very selfish. I’m so obsessed with wanting to be a good person and being afraid that Alan is going to die, that I just lay on the couch thinking about those things. I don’t talk to him. I don’t do anything while I’m here. The thing I’m worrying about protecting, I’m not engaging it or doing anything about it. I’m just dreading it being taken away. So, it is play acting for when it happens, which is kind of like on the plane when I’m so terrified of turbulence and then when the turbulence is really bad I’m eerily kind of calm. Like I have been preparing for it. I have already had the feelings before it happened.
It’s like what you said about not wanting to leave the house but then when you’re at the party you’re fine. When you’re confronted with the thing it suddenly becomes very manageable and the worst thing is like the 40 minutes before.
I think a lot of the songs are like exposure therapy. It’s at least attempting to feel more as opposed to just thinking. It’s trying to actually go towards a realized version instead of conceptual.
That comes across. It comes across in all of your music, but more acutely here. You pose questions that are very existential or could be very troubling and then you just move through them. There’s also so many characters in this album, named and unnamed. When you’re writing do you think of these characters as actual people or versions of yourself?
All of the characters are really people, and I’m thinking of them. But also, like, Jason is an archetype of a man. Even with my personal dealings with these people, I was aware that I was archetyping them. I was dealing with my concept of them as much as who they actually are. And what validation from this type of man means to me. Also, creating a scene. Some of those songs feel like I can’t just explain what I’m thinking. Partly because I don’t fully understand it. Partly because it would be a disservice. It’s a constellation of things. Some of them are very personal and about the actual person and some are just about my ideas of people and my own personal shit that I’m bringing in to it. Casting them all as them but also like representing something lets that all exist at the same time.
With the “No Front Teeth” video, you made this filter thing where one could create their own captions for the video. In the video, as it is, the dialogue in captions doesn’t necessarily have to cohere to the images or what’s being shown. It’s just fantasy. In wanting people to put their own words to it, was that a way to immerse them into this thought experiment?
I think so. I’m also just really glad people like it. And feel like they can connect to it. In a way that’s maybe similar to what I was imagining, but also delightfully different sometimes. Still, a lot of people are responding, “What is this about?” Or, “What genre is this?” People keep asking me about the album cover, “What is the aesthetic of this?” It’s like, I don’t know. So, it’s interesting to see people add seemingly nonsense or whatever but then there’s a little bit of felt seriousness in it too. And I think that’s how the captions feel. Some of them make me laugh. Some of them give me chills for a second. Like that feels eerie. But also all of it requires a balance. We did those captions and at first we were like maybe we shouldn’t have any captions at all. Maybe it’s more effective to not know what we’re saying and people just get to imagine it. But then we put a ton of captions on it and we found a balance that I really like. The ones that stayed are the ones that should have.
I don’t know if I’ve laughed so hard — the women in music line. Like, we’re women in music. I liked, in a trickister-y way that this video isn’t easy dissectible. And now adding this option for people to put their own captions to it adds to that.
It’s more like a feeling. Did you see the movie The Beast? I loved it. But some of it was bad and some of it was amazing. And sometimes I was like, Wait, are they saying that? Is this what they mean? But then it’s like who fucking cares. I think everyone is obsessed with figuring out what the mission statement behind everything is. Like what is this saying about women, or something. It is saying something sometimes, and sometimes it isn’t. I like the things it makes me think about. Not what I’ve been told what I’m supposed to think about. What naturally comes up. I also don’t care if I’m then wrong. Or the next scene nothing is in there. You know what I mean?
Yeah. And to that point of figuring out what a movie is trying to say or what an album is trying to say — maybe the glory of life, to use your title, is actually deciding I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be okay not going through with the process of deciphering. Letting something wash over me without having to add comprehension as the goal.
Yeah and then your body starts figuring out things. There are other ways that are unknown to you. There are little pieces moving around all over the place that are organizing and making little pathways. That movie had that relief to it, that I’m talking about. You can just be in it and it just unfolds.
Speaking of the body, I’m sure when people talk about this album they’re not going to necessarily draw comparisons to Ugly Season, because outwardly it’s a very different sound and project, but given that it was so dance-focused and about being embodied, did that play into writing this record as well? Like what you got from that process of movement?
I mean, there’s a lot. When I did the dance with Kate Wallich, I was in love with her. I was in love with everybody. I felt very present in a way that I hadn’t felt for years. And, in a creative fantasy environment too. It was my job and their job to be there and to dance. So all of those things blending together will inform everything I do. It also shows me when I’m not connected to that. It ended and Covid happened and I just had no access to those specific frameworks, to play inside of that. It was like, how do I carry all of that, those things I learned and those feelings, when it’s not available to me in that specific way? It’s like The Beast. Maybe if I watched that before the dance I would feel different about it. I wouldn’t have that somatic response to certain things. Where now I’m allowing them to wash over me and happen instead of analyzing.
Even when we’re talking about being isolated and internal, I think that I thought that all my songs and everything came from me thinking really hard. But I don’t think they really do. Even though I think about being disembodied all the time, I think I’m weirdly like always embodied in some ways. It’s this really weird competition. I think the dance and all of that made some things really clear to me, where the disconnects are and where they should be and who cares. It made me more willing to go to certain places. Also, I was surprised during the dance. I was surprised at what was helping me figure things out. It became rolling around with people and lifting them up. I wasn’t on Wikipedia or anything.
Do you have teeth nightmares?
No, I think I have before. But most of my nightmares are like, I’m incapacitated in some way. I can’t talk. I’m supposed to but I can’t. I’m lethargic and I’m supposed to get somewhere but I can’t get there.
That reminds me of the opening to the “It’s a Mirror” video. Waking up in that discomfort. Feeling like you’re disoriented and not in control of what’s happening around you.
Do you remember the scene in Cries and Whispers? I think I posted about it on Instagram. She’s like cycling through grief. She’s on the bed and she’s like seemingly cycling through every emotion? And riding the wave of it. That was the original inspiration for that. Fully stuck in your own wave.
It almost feels like sleep paralysis.
Yeah. It doesn’t match the circumstances at all. I’m like in bed and everything’s fine. But I’m stuck.
How did you engage Aldous Haring for the “No Front Teeth” song and the video? It requires putting a lot of yourself. Like, getting an artist who is down to play like that is really amazing.
I had no question about her capability to do it. I knew she would be incredible at it. Same with the song. I could just hear her voice right away on it and just knew that if she was down to do it, whatever she sent me was going to be amazing. But it required a lot of trust from her. Because I know Cody. It could be completely different from what we intended, but I knew I was going to love it and fully trust him. But she didn’t know Cody. She only knew me and Alan. I tried to give her as much information as possible, even the parts that were open-ended and we would be acting. Trying to give her framework. And she was just so down to do everything. It was wild. We just clicked into it seamlessly. With always being like, “Oh god, what if we’re ugly? What if this is stupid?” We both figured out a way to navigate that together. She was just down. Even when I wrote the lyrics to it. I just knew she’d understand. We have similar instincts and ways of operating. And we’ve done similar things in our lives. I knew she’d know what that song was about. Even if she doesn’t directly know everything that I’m referencing, she would know where it was coming from. I don’t know how we did it. It was really full on. A lot of the scenes were just playing this Ave Maria remix over and over and over.
That was your backing track?
Yeah. I don’t know. It was just deranged. I kind of love it, unironically. But also it’s so demented and funny. There are tons of people there. People making the waffles for the waffle party. And they were real. Somehow everyone clicked into it. Even the art department putting all the cords and easter eggs and the combination of some of it being absurd and dumb and some of it being really personal. We somehow all managed to create that world together with just the framework. It wasn’t 100% storyboarded. It was some of that but it was open.
People use Lynchian so flexibly to describe anything that’s somewhat surreal. What’s truly Lynchian about the video is that there’s an internal logic. It makes no sense yet every move feels so organic. Just the emotional logic.
It feels very intentional the whole time. It feels like everything has equal weight. Regardless if it’s horrifying or silly. It all has equal resonance.
Photography: Cody Critcheloe