Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) will release his 5th studio album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately on 15 May 2020.
This week he shared the first single, Describe, which is filled with grizzly distortion and tumbling slide guitars. Hadreas said the song started as a ballad but morphed into something else.
“It started as a really somber ballad. It was very minimal and very slow. And then it turned into this beast of a song. I started writing about when you are in such a dark place that you don’t even remember what goodness is or what anything feels like. And so, the idea was having someone describe that to you, because you forgot or can’t get to it.”
The music video for ‘Describe’ was directed by Hadreas and features Seattle-based choreographer Kate Wallich’s dance company The YC. Wallich and Hadreas worked together on 2019’s The Sun Still Burns Here, a collaborative dance performance in which Hadreas wrote the music and performed.
Set My Heart On Fire Immediately sees Hadreas re-teaming with producer Blake Mills and features contributions from musicians Jim Keltner, Pino Palladino and Matt Chamberlin. It was recorded in Los Angeles, where Perfume Genius settled in 2017 with longtime partner and musical collaborator Alan Wyffels.
Hadreas says he plays with themes of love, sex, memory and the body on the new record and aims to subvert ideas of masculinity.
“I wanted to feel more open, more free and spiritually wild,” Hadreas said, “I’m in a place now where those feelings are very close–but it can border on being unhinged. I wrote these songs as a way to be more patient, more considered –to pull at all these chaotic threads hovering around me and weave them in to something warm, thoughtful and comforting”
The tracks on the album include; Whole Life, Describe, Without You, Jason, Leave, On the Floor, Your Body Changes Everything, Moonbend, Just A Touch, Nothing At All, One More Try, Some Dream and Borrowed Light.
Take a listen to Describe.
OIP Staff
