Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius on what it takes to write with intimacy

Boston Globe

06-06-2025

After seven acclaimed albums of thorny, electronics-enhanced chamber pop, Hadreas seems to have figured out a system. The music of Perfume Genius (which plays Royale on Thursday) is naked and open even as it can feel inscrutable, with a direct intimacy that can evoke discomfort in listeners who are accustomed to looking away when someone in front of them is feeling strong emotions.
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'I was just talking with my friend yesterday about [film director] Lars Von Trier and how I can understand that people would be really put off by that kind of sadistic, almost relentless tragedy and intensity of emotion and stuff [in his movies], but I find it really relieving,' Hadreas says. And though he admits to the inscrutability of some of his lyrics, he figures that the confessional nature of what he's singing about still comes through, even if only indirectly: 'I think it'll be an ASMR to the feeling I'm having regardless.'
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It's that tendency to come at intense matters from angles that cause a tingle that naturally gives Perfume Genius songs much of their power. ('They have a familiarity and an alien quality at the same time, which is my favorite thing,' Hadreas says.) Many of the songs on 'Glory,' the new album, explore grief, either in the moment or in the anticipation of it. The singer attributes that to simply getting older.
'Dying doesn't feel real when you're younger. It feels like an idea. And then the older I get, the more it's in my body as something that's for sure going to happen,' he says with a chuckle. He also sees it when he visits his parents. 'Every time I go, they seem older in a way that maybe I wasn't present for or didn't notice before.'
But there are other dimensions to the spiraling that Hadreas experiences on 'Glory.' With a chorus that leans into confusion and panic, 'Capezio' recounts a fraught sexual encounter with an unnamed woman and a man named Jason. It's a name that's run like a conceptual thread through Perfume Genius's last few albums, as the subject of 2020's 'Jason,' then popping up again in 2022's 'Hellbent.' Even though they're based on different real people (albeit 'dreamified and fictionalized'), Hadreas says that Jason represents a certain type of man he knows all too well.
'[For] 'Capezio,' I had the real name in it, and then everyone's like, 'You can't do that.' I was like, 'Oh, yeah,'' says Hadreas with a laugh. 'It is a stereotypical male energy that isn't very generous and is kind of confusing. Part of that I fetishize or get off on, and part of it is really [that] I don't understand intellectually why I would be attracted to that or be activated by that dynamic.'
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With such heavy subject matter and music, Hadreas needs substantial downtime before he's ready to dive back into writing after the work for the last album and tour is done. ('I feel like I need to empty my brain,' he says. 'I need to have, like, a smooth brain.') But it's not simply a matter of mental health preservation. It's a necessary part of his creative process.
'I tour for a year and a half and it's really overwhelming and amazing, but then I isolate and really go gremlin mode, just binge eat and play video games,' Hadreas says. 'I need to, like, do nothing, or else I'll kind of end up doing what I did before. I need to find out what's there now, which I can't really do if it's based off of the last thing I did.'
To that end, Hadreas even embraces the dread fear of the blank page that refuses to be filled. 'Even writer's block is a part of writing to me,' says the man who's afraid to finish things. 'It all feels like the same thing. But then there's a part of it where it all opens up and you find it. I think a lot of that is just [that] there needs to be some grace in it. I need to be zoomed out. I can't have a lot of intentions. I can't think too hard about it.'
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The cover for the new Perfume Genius album, "Glory."
Courtesy
The same holds true for the cover for 'Glory,' which sees Hadreas photographed in a home recording studio, immaculately lit and splayed out awkwardly on the floor while being watched by two indistinct figures, one sitting in darkness in the corner and one standing next to a pickup truck outside. 'I liked that it had that energy that we're talking about. It looked like I could be dancing. It could be kind of sensual seeming, or I could be sick or in trouble [or] look like I fell, which is funny, but, you know, sad to fall,' Hadreas says with a laugh.
He adds of the setting for the shot, 'The house has a lot of energy, but it's still the big window to the outside that's all bright and pretty, but I'm not out there.'
PERFUME GENIUS
Royale, 279 Tremont St., June 12, at 7 p.m. Tickets $50.
Marc Hirsh can be reached at [e-mail] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social