Gentle and rich, vulnerability echoes throughout Perfume Genius’ ‘Glory’
Emelia Gauch
Score: ★★★★
Top Track: “Full On”
Alienating, strange and familiar, “Glory” by Perfume Genius sounds like wandering the empty halls of your home.
Perfume Genius — the artist alias of Michael Hadreas — delicately haunts the listener with the lush instrumentation and trembling vocals, balancing longing and grief, loud and soft, pushes and pulls.
More often than not, Hadreas achieves a successful balance of these items to form a beautiful melancholic album that, according to an interview with The Guardian, draws on a period of depression he experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the pandemic is not the subject of the album in the slightest, “Glory” contains a pervasive sense of disconnection with the world and with oneself.
“It’s a Mirror” opens the album with twangy guitar strums and a steady beat. Hadreas’ voice fits the song’s REM-ish sound well as he asks, “What do you get from the stretching horizon/That you’d leave me spiraling with no one to hold?”
The poetic lyrics on “It’s a Mirror” paint tangible images and sensations, with lines such as “Memories hum like a hive shaken out” standing out.
“No Front Teeth” oscillates between restrained singing and freeing choruses. Featured singer-songwriter Aldous Harding and Hadreas harmonize, voices drifting only to be swept up into electric guitar-forward instrumental breaks that showcase the strength of Hadreas’ band.
“Clean Heart” feels like a tiptoeing and twinkling lullaby, reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens. Depressing yet hopeful, Hadreas sings, “Time, it makes a clean heart/When you’re miles away from it all.” In “Me & Angel,” Hadreas similarly grieves a past relationship through a bittersweet lens, as he sings about letting someone you loved go so they can be with someone better for them. Perhaps too controlled, the song feels like it is building to a release that never comes.
Moments of experimentation feel especially bright despite the melancholic or tragic content. In “Left For Tomorrow,” for example, Hadreas imagines a future without his mother.
Towards the end of the song, a buzzing sound intermittently appears, providing a harsh electronic reprieve between the first and second halves of the album. This sound feels exciting against the sea of softness of “Glory.”
While not as clearly experimental, “Full On,” the preceeding song to “Left for Tomorrow,” stands out as well. Harps strum and Hadreas shows off his vocal range against a backdrop of synthesizers and chimes. “Full On” elegantly aches in its specificity and proximity to the vulnerability of others with the lyrics “I saw every quarterback crying/Laid up on the grass/And nodding like a violet.”
“Capezio” can easily be imagined to exist in the same ephemeral universe as “Full On.”
Sung in falsetto, “Capezio” builds on “Jason,” a song from Perfume Genius’ previous album, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately.” Tension grows throughout “Capezio” between the power of Hadreas’ vocals and their simultaneous quietness, practically melting into the next track “Dion,” a simple and gentle piano ballad.
“In a Row” chronicles a dark fantasy — or maybe a nightmare — where Hadreas gets trapped in the trunk of a moving car. The chorus swells with strong piano chords and drums coming together to form a sense of anxiety. Hadreas seems to ironically point to how artists use trauma in their work with the lines “Take me the long way round/Think of all the poems I'll get out.”
In “Hanging Out,” minimal, carefully placed drum beats and guitars platform the lyrics to tell a twisted and atmospheric story. The electronic buzzing returns towards the end once more, like the song is being chased out by drones.
On the final and titular track “Glory,” Hadreas’ falsetto floats, blending into the music. The lyrics, sparse and short, center the body, “Loosened, roving stray/Guest of body.”
The album, both personal and universal, captures various challenging emotions, moments and thoughts from the pang of heartbreak to the weight of anticipatory grief. It doesn’t provide answers or solutions, but instead presents these raw feelings like a mirror, allowing the listener to see themselves reflected in the music.
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