Perfume Genius, Islington Assembly Hall, London - review

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 30 Νοεμβρίου 2014 - 21:07

No singer who makes a music video in which he and a gay porn star embrace in their underwear can be accused of lacking boldness. YouTube certainly didn't think so: it judged the video, for Perfume Genius's 2012 song "Hood", "unsafe for family viewing" and refused to show a promotional clip of it.

Mike Hadreas, the Seattle singer-songwriter who is Perfume Genius, hasn't always been so bold musically, however. In the past his songs tended to lapse into tremulous indie balladry, funereally slow in pace, plodding glumly behind the work of a more inventive singer-songwriter, Sufjan Stevens. At least such was the case until his transformational new album Too Bright .

The change was clear from the opening moments of his Islington Assembly Hall show. A sinister thrum established a tension absent from previous Perfume Genius songs. Hadreas, illuminated amid dry ice by eerie red lighting and backed by three musicians, summoned Salome with a slow twisting dance. An oppressive synthesiser riff muscled its way into the song. The singer's voice took on a distorted high tone, either excited or distressed. The track was called "The Body": "You can have it/If you can handle the stink."

Too Bright, recorded in Bristol with Portishead's Adrian Utley and PJ Harvey collaborator John Harvey, has taken Hadreas out of his comfort zone. Its tracks were electrifying at the show. "Grid" set Hadreas's gentle doo-wop croon to a claustrophobic electronic bassline. "Queen" threw YouTube's timorousness back in its face, an alt-pop anthem about being gay complete with wittily exotic synth melody: "No family is safe/When I sashay."

Themes of sexuality and homophobia run through his work, but whereas previously the music maundered around them, tonight it grappled with them. The tone was enigmatic, at times consoling and affirmative, elsewhere darker and more anxious.

When a phone went off during the piano ballad "Katie" Hadreas suavely turned it into a joke. But other songs ended with him looking preoccupied, often glancing, as though for reassurance, towards his partner, Alan Wyffels, who was playing the synthesiser. During one number he let loose a wild shriek, answered by whoops from the audience. The sense of release was powerful; though from what, the music was too interesting and inscrutable to spell out.

perfumegenius.net

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