Perfume Genius Releases New Album ‘No Shape’
“True to turbulent form, Mike Hadreas jams together moments of euphoric pop beauty with disruptive ugliness in an album of uniformly fantastic tunes.” – The Guardian
““No Shape” pushes both words and music into stranger territory, as Perfume Genius grows brasher and more inward-looking at the same time.” – NY Times
“Perfume Genius seemingly grows wings and sails through joyous flights of fancy like Just Like Love or saccharine serenades like Every Night.” – The Music
“Hadreas isn’t afraid to lay himself bare within his songwriting – a trait that listeners will continue to find comfort in.” – Stack
Perfume Genius, nom de poster-wraith of musician Mike Hadreas, has released his fourth album, No Shape via Matador Records / Remote Control Records. The album was recorded in Los Angeles, produced by Blake Mills, mixed by Shawn Everett. The video for the first single, ‘Slip Away’can be seen via the image below.
Perfume Genius’s 2014 breakout album Too Bright— featuring seismic anthem ‘Queen’ — marked a musical and performative leap that sounds unlike anything before or since. With his new songs, Hadreas goes even further, merging church music, makeout music, R&B, art pop, krautrock, and queer soul into his take on stadium anthems, completing the journey from critically acclaimed underground hero to fully fledged pop auteur.
Of the album, Hadreas says: “I pay my rent. I’m approaching health. The things that are bothering me personally now are less clear, more confusing. I don’t think I really figured them out with these songs. There’s something freeing about how I don’t have it figured out. Unpacking little morsels, magnifying my discomfort, wading through buried harm, laughing at or digging in to the embarrassing drama of it all. I may never come out the other side but it’s invigorating to try and hopefully, ultimately helpful. I think a lot of them are about trying to be happy in the face of whatever bullshit I created for myself or how horrible everything and everyone is.”
In a bio for the album, writer Choire Sicha says, “God is all around actually and some of these songs are about being equal and some are about the witchcraft of believing. This is church music the same way Prince’s Black Album is — too dirty. It’s femme art pop the way Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is — too scary.”
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