Album Review: Perfume Genius - Learning

There are rare occasions when you just know - when you put on a record for the first time, and you are overwhelmed by the vague and indefinable sense of warmth that comes with the knowledge that what you are listening to is, in a word, special. It has nothing to do with epoch, genre, or geographical origin, but stems from an intangible kind of magic that elevates the music above the confines of being merely ‘good’, into something wondrous. Learning by Perfume Genius (aka Seattle native Mike Hadreas) is such an album.

It’s difficult to know where to even begin picking Learning apart, really. The first thing that will strike you about Hadreas is his voice. Floating above the bobbing piano intro of the title track that opens the album is this tragic, pain-laced voice which sounds almost childlike, but which also seems worn out by years of sorrow. This is far from the only contradiction that adorns the album - one of the most intriguing things about Learning is that it is sheathed in paradox. It is resolutely dark in tone, yet it emits a gentle warm glow. It is utterly minimal in its components, but it still comes across as a hugely complex piece of work. And while the songs are shot through with the starkest kind of fragility, it is difficult to escape the feeling that from the catharsis of putting this pain on record, there emerges a kind of defiance.

Perhaps wisely for a record of such emotional heft, Learning is short in length. The ten songs clock in at less than half an hour, and each is in itself an ephemeral snapshot of raw humanity. The album seems to drift away on the breeze before it has even begun, and while you are left drained from the experience, ultimately it leaves you pining for more. Hadreas, clearly, is a believer in the old maxim that less is more, something that is abundantly plain from the sparse instrumentation he employs throughout.

In spite of the fact that the shelves of our record stores are clogged up by a million and one albums constructed, like Learning, almost entirely from piano and voice, you can’t really accurately compare Perfume Genius to any other artist. There may be a hint of turn of the decade Radiohead (think ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’) in the ghostly murmur of ‘Gay Angels’, and very occasionally the vocal delivery calls to mind Jason Lytle and Grandaddy’s more tender moments, but aside from these all-too fleeting reference points, Hadreas is an artist whose sheer uniqueness is extraordinary.

Just take this coda from ‘Mr Petersen’ as an example: “He let me smoke weed in his truck / If I could convince him I loved him enough...When I was sixteen, he jumped off a building / Mr Petersen, I know you were ready to go / I hope there’s room for you up above or down below”. It’s difficult to imagine any other artist who could take what is essentially the tale of (at best) a questionable relationship between an older and a younger man, and imbue it with such heartbreaking compassion. This is the real power of Perfume Genius, his ability to inspire feelings that cannot be drawn from the work of any other musician.

By now, it probably goes without saying that Learning is not the easiest album that 2010 will give us. But at the moment it is almost impossible to imagine anything being released that will even come close to being as enriching as this. It is the sort of record that can completely engulf you with its beauty, and leaves you wondering just what other marvels Perfume Genius will be able to sculpt in years to come because, lest we forget, this is his first release. Mike Hadreas is a rare and wonderful artist. Savour him.