Perfume Genius - Glory

Glory is a self-reflective meditation on time and place, grief, loss, love, and what remains on the other side.

This is the seventh album from Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, a singer-songwriter whose rise and trajectory into the art-pop field has been a captivating journey to follow. From the quiet piano balladry laced over his earliest works like Learning and my personal favorite, 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It, to the explosive forays into chamber pop on Too Bright and No Shape, Mike Hadreas writes and performs like he always has something to prove. Even if what emerges out of his pen is not the most formal song he’s written, everything he puts to words and music comes from emotional urgency and direct vulnerability.

Catharsis and atmosphere are the two main things that have defined the Perfume Genius catalogue for me so far. The pictures that Hadreas paints within his music, be they real or fictional, fall on a spectrum from liberating to near-nightmarish. He could be hopeful about the future in one moment and regretful about the past in the next.

And because these themes have evolved throughout his career, so has his sound. On 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Mike’s most extended project shows an array of everything he’s worked on until that point, from soft, low-key moments of serenity on “Borrowed Light,” to the throwback 60s nostalgia hits like “Without You” or the incredibly groovy “On the Floor.”

2022’s Ugly Season, by comparison, revels in the avant-garde playing field that his contemporaries like Xiu Xiu have helped pave for him. While a much more dense and volatile listen than anything else he’s released, it’s still a captivating journey, nonetheless, exploring each corner of his mind with challenging thematic and sonic perspectives.

Glory also offers some different perspectives, as Hadreas illustrates and reflects on trauma, grief, past relationships, and longing for better days. Self-examination is a huge theme throughout the project, or to put it in his own words, “It’s a mirror, down.”

Mike Hadreas repeats these words on the opening track and the first single to the album, It’s a Mirror, as if it acts like this project’s mission statement. In the song’s second verse, Hadreas sings, “What do I get out of being established?/I still run and hide when a man's at the door.” Is what he’s describing here an indicator of the traumas that rise out of real life, or is it a broken reflection? When he says, “It’s a mirror, down,” down where? We don’t even know what the mirror looks like, its dimensions, how far “down” it stretches, or if there’s even an end.

Why do I think this is the focal point of Perfume Genius’s latest album? Because everything that follows throughout the project, every situation Mike displays, and the mess of emotions that brew on each track, is only a reflection of something deep down.

Mike examines perspective from a more mature and sophisticated place. He’s painting various scenarios that feel like broken images. But when we look deeper into them, there’s a darker, more vulnerable underbelly hiding inside. This mirror is a tool he uses to examine his past and to judge where he stands currently.

I think the track “In a Row” exemplifies this dynamic perfectly. Within the pulsing 6/8 structure of the song, Mike imagines himself hidden in the trunk of a car, counting the speed bumps, hearing broken words from the driver, and leading himself to reminisce on a twisted sexual encounter. This situation, while a fabrication of reality, is a deep reflection of the past, with regret fueling Mike to paint this portrait, despite listeners not knowing the source of this feeling.

Or take “Capezio,” which, if you’ve been following the Perfume Genius catalogue closely, the song thematically starts where the song “Jason” from Set My Heart ends. Here, Hadreas envisions a third lover sitting between him and Jason and utilizes this image to project his mess of emotions onto them. While this song may just be a fantasy lurking behind him, it’s Hadreas’s directness with listeners and his openness that give these moments their captivating, vulnerable edge.

All of this leads us to think: What’s at the end of the mirror? If the larger-than-life reflection that Mike examines brings him nothing but grief, regret, and broken memories based on real-life traumas, what chance is there that “glory” is found on the other side, if such a thing exists?

The album finishes with a near-unfulfilled resolve on the title track, saying that if there is any “glory” to be found through this, it’s “quiet glory,” as if it’s a break from staring down the mirror. It’s almost telling the audience that we get nearly nothing from staring down and down at our reflection. If we stare inside for too long, the reflection will become less recognizable.

This somber conclusion isn’t meant to tie up any loose ends on all the other tracks or to make sense of each broken reflection. It reminds the listener that your past and everything you hold within it will always exist. The question now is, “Do we keep looking in the mirror, or do we find a moment take our eyes off it?”

Favorite Tracks: It’s a Mirror, No Front Teeth, Clean Heart, Full On, Capezio, Hanging Out, In a Row

Least Favorite: Dion

8.5/10