Michael Hadreas, best known since 2010 as Perfume Genius, is back with exactly what we need in this moment: fresh living-room dance opportunities. His brand new release, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, presents an artist candidly describing the high drama of desire and emotional turmoil through strong alternating currents of drowsy dreamscapes and confident shimmer.
His meatiest collection of work yet, the progressive and confident follow up to 2017’s Grammy®-nominated No Shape eases the listener in, then drops “Describe,” a gauzy, distortion and slide guitar-laden appeal for help from within the darkness. Buzz gives way to piano clarity and head-bobbing on “Without You,” then a full exercise of familiar falsetto in “Jason,” before unearthing his lesser-known lower register on harp-laden “Leave.” Then comes exactly why Hadreas deserves a coronation to Pop Prince status, the glimmering “On The Floor.” This tune beckons one to dance and has not surprisingly already begun spawning remixes. Not to say this album will feel unfamiliar, on the contrary, but it’s a multi-directional expansion of Hadreas’s talents, inclusive seemingly of other dimensions.
In addition to heavy sparkle, fans will find a lot to recognize thematically in the aspects of love and longing, this time under further development. "I wanted to feel more open, more free and spiritually wild," explains Hadreas, "and 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”
In the alternate universe of “normal” times, Perfume Genius would be preparing for an arena tour with Tame Impala, and hopefully will be reunited with this opportunity in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, radio audiences are finding “On The Floor” in heavy rotation at WYMS, WTMD, Colorado Sound, Birmingham Mountain Radio, KRML, and KCLC among many, many more.
