Music review – Perfume Genius: Put Your Back N 2 It

Perfume Genius
Put Your Back N 2 It
Matador

Mike Hadreas’ sophomore album, Put Your Back N 2 It –released under the moniker Perfume Genius – excels as a simple and lush progression that fleshes out Hadreas’ unique voice as a singer-songwriter.

Hadreas presents an album of sonic simplicity, including mostly a mix of gentle, piano chord progressions, the soft drone of budget synths, sparse reverberating percussion, and swelling strings.

As a result of the music being immediate and unchallenging, Hadreas’ quavering voice fills a focal point in a very satisfying way. His lyricism compliments the overly earnest meakness of his voice as he explores themes of sexuality, family, loveand, perhaps the most compelling of all, hope. When paired with the simple beauty of the music, his fragile voice is able to bring comfort and familiarity to the often dark, explicit, and sexual themes of his lyrics.

Put Your Back N 2 It is a special album because of Hadreas’ presentation of a unique perspective that seldom gets explored with such elegance. A few names pop to mind – Antony and the Johnsons, Xiu Xiu, Elliott Smith – but Perfume Genius differentiates himself in being able to accomplish stark and ethereal in the same breathe in his own way. Hadreas’ music shines as pure light and warmth in the face of insecurity, self- loathing, abuse, addiction, and other trials and is sure to be an emotive force in the ears of a listener who can relate.

Andrew Cockerill
Contributor