THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After approaching writing as an insular practice for much of his career, while making his new seventh album Glory, Perfume Genius (real name: Mike Hadreas) welcomed more collaboration from the musicians working on the project. The result is a more wiry and driving musical underbed to Hadreas’ stories.
The album contains themes that he’s wrestled with artistically throughout his career — themes of the body and its decay, of domesticity and love, and of inescapable history and damage. There is also a return of some of his characters. But Glory is written from a new vantage point — on the other side of struggle, where one is left to contend with all that has happened but also has to learn to live in a still and uncharted place.
Glory finds him re-teaming with longtime producer Blake Mills, keyboardist / co-writer Alan Wyffels, and an incredible group of musicians who have played with him on the road and in the studio. Contributors includie guitarists Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Greg Uhlmann, drummers Tim Carr and Jim Keltner, and bassist Pat Kelly, along with a special appearance from New Zealand singer-songwriter Aldous Harding.
The first single from the album was It’s A Mirror. “I wake up overwhelmed even when nothing is going on,” Hadreas says. “I spend the rest of the day trying to regulate, which I prefer to do at home alone with my thoughts. But why? They are mostly bad. They also haven’t really changed for decades. I wrote It’s A Mirror while stuck in one of these isolating loops, seeing that something different and maybe even beautiful is out there but not quite knowing how to venture out. I have a lot more practice keeping the door closed.”
