Perfume Genius Show celebrates “Too Bright” in Hollywood Forever a picturesque display – US Rocker®

Photos and review by ALYSON CAMUS

-HOLLYWOOD- There are albums that you listen to a few times after they are released, and there are albums that stay with you forever. I still consider Perfume Genius’ groundbreaking album Too bright as one of the newest as I still listen to it with the same emotion intact. The songs still work their magic, all with a raw and soulful urgency rarely seen in today’s music industry.

The record is already 10 years old and Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, had only a handful of anniversary shows planned at intimate venues, including two at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Both nights sold out immediately, but I had a chance to get a ticket for Thursday night.

Perfume Genius writes music that grabs you unexpectedly, puts a lump in your throat, sends shivers down your spine and even transforms you, while his mesmerizing performances always mix incredible vulnerability with a predatory attitude, and these are shows not to be missed let slip.

Julianna Barwick, a Los Angeles-based composer, singer and producer, opened the evening with her original and thoughtful compositions rooted in the layers of her voice. She stood in front of an electronic table and built tracks with a cathedral effect while recording loops of her vocals to achieve the most amazing polyphonic result.

It was both thumping and eerie, ethereal music in the middle of a cemetery, slowly spreading throughout the beautiful venue while barely pausing between the interwoven tracks. With piano lines and soaring vocals, she delivered a thoughtful performance for an audience that listened to the entire show in religious silence.

As expected, Hadreas and his band played the entire event Too bright Album, plus a few other songs that fill the evening with pure beauty. The intensity of the music evoked strong emotions in the audience, and I even saw a man burst into tears during some of the songs. He wore a glittering outfit for the occasion and enjoyed every second of the show, while Perfume Genius, in a magnificent gold shirt, under a darker gold jacket, which he didn’t wear for long, seemed a little nervous at the beginning, but told us later, that he had a great time.

As he performed his songs with powerful theatricality, he alternated from the front of the stage to a more secluded spot behind his keyboard. Too bright is effectively filled with beautiful piano melodies, but also melancholic strings, experimental synthesizers, electronic violence, piercing screams, loud beats – and everything was there on this beautiful night. His performance fully expressed the album’s impressive range of raw emotions, while his wild and touching vocals pierced everyone’s heart. He is one of those rare artists who can effortlessly mix vulnerability with ferocity, fragility with boldness and even aggression, embodying a fictional character capable of sounding triumphant at the lowest point of human despair.

“No family is safe/When I sashay,” Hadreas sang in the beautifully thunderous, powerful and menacing “Queen,” the album’s second song. He performed this satirical and triumphant anthem in all its splendor and abandon, and he even sang the beloved song a second time during the encore, pulling out the pile of tulle that took up one side of the stage, then wrapping himself in it and drowning himself on one Chair in the middle of the stage falls. It was perhaps the most dramatic moment of the show, art pop at its finest, perfume genius at the height of his art.

He cultivated this romantic vision throughout the album, while the solemnity of some slow songs stood in complete contrast to the aggression and anger of other tracks. It’s no exaggeration to say that every song on “Too Bright” sounds different and there’s absolutely nothing predictable, nothing conventional about it. They cry and rage from peace to war, from sadness to pain, fear and wildness.

The joyful synthesizer and finger-clapping of “Fool” transformed into a church-like anthem, with Hadreas’ operatic and cathartic scream penetrating the darkest and brightest parts of everyone’s soul. The lush melody of “No Good” – a song he told us they had never played live before – a mix of pain, brightness and blissful moments was soon followed by an abandonment of cascading piano notes. The roar of “My Body” reinforced the panic that arose from the desire to mix beautiful melodies with ugly thoughts, while liquid morphine flowed into our ears in the middle of “Don’t Let Them In.”

His great band gave the songs a sonic relief with gorgeous guitar lines and powerful drumming, while Hadreas sometimes tapped the floor with his shoes. The truly unique “Grid” soared with stabbing synths, cymbals, pounding drums, tribal chants and screams that exuded anger and desperation, while Mike Hadreas performed “I’m A Mother”, sitting in a chair with vocals barely audible, but with pain and aching slow torment that stands in complete contrast to the polyphonic sound waves of the next song, the title track “Too Bright.”

“This is the last song on the album,” he told us before the defiant “All Along.” It is indeed a relatively short album that burned too brightly too quickly, but the gig wasn’t over yet as he continued with a Leonard Cohen cover “Bird on the Wire” and a few songs of his own: the funky poppy one “On the Floor.” (which starts like a Stevie Wonder song) from his 2020 album Set my heart on fire immediately This was followed by the beautiful doo-wop-esque “Story of Love” and the transcendent “My Place” – two of the three bonus tracks included on a special vinyl version of “Too Bright” celebrating the album’s 10th anniversary. The edgy guitars and uplifting climb of “Slip Away” from his 2017 album “No Shape” closed the show before an encore of “Queen.”

The intensity of a Perfume Genius’ performance is difficult to describe as his underlying anger is expressed in cathartic songs. The emotions he extracts from his cathartic music always trigger a kind of disoriented euphoria, a threat hurled in everyone’s face as the songs sound like secular anthems written for human existence.

There is no doubt Too bright what it’s about, but that’s perhaps the most astonishing part of Perfume Genius’ genius: forget gayness and homophobia, there’s something deeply personal but also immensely universal in these sad and daring songs, cloaking their pop sensibilities in a semi-religious sheen . And his performance on Thursday evening was another fine demonstration of their fascinating strength.

Listen to Perfume Genius:

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