Perfume Genius: Ugly Season | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Perfume Genius, solo project of Mike Hadreas, has built a reputable body over work since its debut in 2010. With his unique sound and subject matter exploring personal topics such as sexuality and domestic abuse, Hadreas delivers his fourth album, Ugly Season. The music of Ugly Season was originally composed to accompany The Sun Still Burns Here, a collaborative immersive dance piece choreographed by Kate Wallich and commissioned by the Seattle Theatre Group and Mass MoCA. With this release, the entire work can now be experienced as an album, without the added elements of dance and visuals.

Opening with Just a Room, Hadreas introduces the listener to dark strings, stark chords and barely intelligible vocals peering through the wall of sound. Soon the noise stops almost altogether, dropping back to a gentle hum, joined by a music box-like glockenspiel, still eerily atonal. Suddenly Hadreas’ breath hitches, and the piece fades into Herem.

Listeners can see how this body of work was created to accompany a dance. It unfolds slowly, and the tracks meld into one another neatly. Herem doesn’t disturb the atmosphere of the preceding song, instead incorporating similar motifs and building slowly from where it left off. Moaning strings and flutes blur into vocalise above a drone, discordant and airy, harmonies never quite pairing perfectly. The way that breath is incorporated into the texture of the album evokes a sensual and vaguely unsettling feeling, like we’re too close for comfort.

Other tracks are a lot less atmospheric and gentle, such as single Pop Song, which is anything but. Bright synth pads bounce around from ear to ear in a unique and seemingly random panning as Hadreas repeats the four short stanzas across an almost five-minute song. Hellbent has an intensity that’s unique on this album, with a driving synth beat and heavily distorted guitar playing an unmelodic and unhinged lead.

Ugly Season is a chaotic collection of synth-heavy, unique pieces of music with a clear arc. It’s not hard to imagine this album accompanying a modern, immersive dance piece. Compared to previous works, this is not quite as strong lyrically or melodically, but it’s also very clear that was never the focus. Perfume Genius can do indie pop, and has done it for over a decade, so while this is a direction fans may be surprised by, change is always more welcome than recycling something over and over again.

- Alison Paris.