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Perfume Genius Album Review: Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

(Matador)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is so far the best distillation of Perfume Genius. Mike Hadreas’ songs have always centered around life as a gay man; with his first couple records, he cooed with intimacy and tenderness with minimal, soft instrumentation to accompany him. 2014′s Too Bright was where he started to take a turn for the maximal; 2017′s Blake Mills-produced No Shape was a full-on commitment to dense, headphones-listen production. His new record has it all. Hadreas sings about love and sex and memory and masculinity, while Mills, along for the ride again, enhances the baroque pop and 60′s-inspired croons of Hadreas’ compositions.

Opener “Whole Life” starts with a deep breath from Hadreas, as if he knows he’s about to do some heavy lifting, processing past and current relationships throughout Set My Heart like it’s a therapy session. Thankfully, the instruments are there for him. On immediate standout "Describe”, he no longer knows what it’s like to feel good: “No bells anymore, just my stomach rumbling / Can you describe them for me?” he asks. Mills’ chugging guitar and background slide and Hadreas’ Renaissance synths evoke different eras of music, an appropriate mirror to Hadreas’ loss of conception. Hadreas’ musical and life partner Alan Wyffels is a major presence throughout the record, and his harpsichord on “Jason” and Rhodes on closer “Borrowed Light” signal the arrival of the former’s title character, inspired by a straight man with whom Hadreas had a sexual encounter at age 23. “On The Floor” is a portrayal of all-consuming desire, and Mills here is similarly unabashed, providing warped and fried synth guitar.

Of course, Set My Heart is filled with songs of devotion, too, both real and imagined. “Give me your weight, I’m solid” alternates with “Hold me up, I’m falling down,” on “Your Body Changes Everything”, a song where Hadreas and his partner are there for each other. His staccato, flute-like synthesizers and Sam Gendel’s swaying synth drums soundtrack the oscillation of feeling. On “Nothing at All”, over distorted, guitar-like synthesizers, Hadreas promises, “The sadness you carry, it hangs like a ghost / And I’ll just tear it down and I’ll wear it like a ribbon.” And even in a hazy state on the tremolo guitar-laden “One More Try”, where Hadreas’ “remembering” is “not what it used to be”, he declares, “baby blue, I still see you.” Perhaps most moving is the imagined wartime queer love story of “Just a Touch”, bolstered by subtle strings, Mills’ slinky guitar and bass, and Jim Keltner’s steady, echoing drums.

And then there’s emotional climax “Some Dream”, one of Perfume Genius’s greatest achievements to date. It starts surreal, Hadreas alone, both physically and mentally: “Endlessly lazy and dumb / I lick the day like salt from some dream,” he sings. The song explodes into a mid-section distorted guitar and piano dirge, as he starts to gain awareness and self-awareness, eerily prescient: “And all that time spent perfecting my look / Now there’s nobody around.” Eventually the song tails off into a wash of saxophone and synths, as Hadreas sings, “All this for a song?” It’s one of those moments that takes your breath away, having just witnessed the creator question everything he’s ever done, making you realize why he sings at the beginning of the record, “Half of my whole life is gone / Let it drift and wash away.” But the songs on Set My Heart dare to sound and be hopeful, not nihilistic. The passiveness Hadreas expresses--letting love and desire do its thing--offers a respite. Set his heart on fire, and he’ll gladly let it burn.