“I wanted to make something that people could listen to for a long time”: The Line of Best Fit meets Perfume Genius

When we meet, there are five weeks until the UK release of Put Your Back N 2 It and it’s evident that the 28 year old still feels new to the whole charade. When asked his thoughts concerning the forthcoming album’s release he responds quietly with a “OK, yeah”, as if not quite sure of what he should say, as if not entirely sure of how a musician should feel before the release of a highly anticipated sophomore LP.

“I wasn’t used to any sort of reception for anything I did, you know, in my daily life or anything. So there was some pressure at first for me to, I don’t know, try to do something better and something cooler in the first instance. Then I sort of realised ‘It’s just going to be what it’s going to be so don’t think about it so much’. I was a lot more purposeful in what I wanted to try to talk about [with Put Your Back N 2 It]. There were things and topics for people I wanted to write songs for so I was thinking about that a lot more this time around… It still is very earnest, but I was a little more deliberate.”

Even the experience of going into a studio this time around was a more daunting prospect than recording in his mother’s house in Washington for Learning‘s documentation of his troubled teens and twenties. “It ended up being really good”, Hadreas explained, almost surprised at the ease of the recording process. “I was scared about it just because I did the first one at my Mom’s and I was able to experiment and do these pretty ridiculous things alone, that I didn’t want anyone watching me do. Initially I thought I wouldn’t be able to that, that I would be too self conscious, I wouldn’t sing out or anything. But I worked with people that were really tender and knew it was still going to follow a simple process. From mistakes I made and trial and error, I ended up liking some of , so really it ended up being what I would have done at home, but with people.”

Recorded in England and Seattle with the help of engineer Andrew Morgan and producer John Goodmanson who features on cello, the latest record represents a slight move away from the synths and computerised sounds of the debut. ”The engineer played the guitar. But really there weren’t a lot of people that got called in,” he relates. “There’s a couple of songs that are old, and that I had written around the time I wrote most of the songs for Learning, and one I wrote while in the studio, so I kind of puzzled them all together.” Touring partner and now boyfriend Alan Wyffels also features on record. “Yeah, the same super gay life setup”, Hadreas laughs. “I felt like he did a lot more, because he was there with me, and well, because he was there in my heart. He was a big part of it.”

While Hadreas has a very open personality and clearly thoughtfully ponders his answers to each question he does openly confess to finding it difficult to convey his perspectives and explain his art. “I’ll read interviews and sometimes I make absolutely no sense” he jokes. “I read one recently and was laughing so hard because I was making zero sense the whole time, they’d printed it all off and I just felt so bad for whoever opened the paper that day.” So being concise is easier? “Oh yeah. Big time. That’s what’s so fun about it all in a lot of ways. but I can just distill things, and make them about that, . I can get obsessed over that one thing. can be a lot more multi-tiered but not be confusing, where in my daily life I really have no idea what’s going on most of the time!”

So why this fascination with dark topics? His songs have covered everything from abuse, suicide and homosexual insecurity to addiction: “For all of those issues it’s still confusing inside but that’s what navigates anyway… Growing up, I read a lot about things that were really soulless and really depressing, there’s nothing injected into it. I’ve always kinda liked that stuff but I always wanted to put soul into it somehow…” Take ‘Dirge’ on the new album for example. A song which employs the verse of Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem of the same name. “I read a lot of poetry though I don’t always feel like I understand it, but I am sort of obsessed by it, and with that poem I could feel what it would look like and what it was telling me.” Hadreas’ art is borne from a type of self confession, deliberately stagnating in emotion and yet never self pitying, never screaming out to be heard, as if merely, quietly uttering his traumas back to himself. Tragedy for the sake of tragedy “is valid too and that can be really powerful,” he continues. “But I guess I’m a little more of a hippy. I think even if you risk being sappy or over earnest I’d rather go further in that direction than the other. And that’s comforting too, there’s more of a comfort to that. I like cheese,” he jokes ” and even when I’m just playing piano music it always sounds like the end credits to something… and something really generic! It’s not even like I’m a wizard at the piano” he laughs “but it always just ends up sounding like Pay It Forward or some shitty movie”.

When recording Put Your Back N 2 It, Hadreas recalls listening to and taking inspiration from soundtracks as well as ambient rock bands such as the innocence mission. “I think I like that trying to be anything other than what it is. It’s not innovative, just clear and straight forward; not confrontational. With my second album, as a whole I wanted to make something that people could listen to for a long time”. For others “you’ve got to make that one song that people are going to obsessively listen to for like a month. Over and over and over. I think I’m incapable of making that kind of music; it’s just not my calling to be making ‘cool’ tunes. I just do what I do”. He sounds disbelieving when asked how it makes him feel to consider that people find his music, for all it’s simplicity and honesty, to be timeless, that they could still be listening years down the line. “That would be amazing, but I don’t think about it too much.”

With a UK and European tour scheduled for May, Hadreas has reflected on the benefits of his situation and the general ease with which he moved from bedroom recording artist to performing in sold out venues. Supporting Beirut was a learning curve “’cause we were opening for them and people weren’t always there to see us. So the first couple of shows I was kind of sad if people weren’t maybe all being nice and quiet. But some bands have to play hundreds of shows like that, and really have to sell it. So once I learnt to stop being such a baby about it it was a lot of fun. I knew if I wanted to and to be serious about this I had to get over that pretty quickly. I’m one to get scared, so it helps having people there to turn my vocals up when maybe I’d want to turn them down, or put a whole load of reverb on it. It’s a lot scarier than the first album seemed to be as it’s more of an organised project, but I wanted to make it pretty quickly just so I didn’t have more time to think about myself.”

So here we find a new Perfume Genius; a little less of a “baby”, a little more confident and ready to be serious about the art that was at first used for personal soulsearching and which later turned him into a poster boy for the soulfully demure. Branching out from the tales of his own life on Learning to the tales of others on Put Your Back N 2 It, there is more colour in Hadreas’ cheeks and more flesh to his music than we’ve seen or heard before. It’s still a bleak palate that he works from, but one that bares his heart on his sleeve and holds beauty and soul at its very core.

Put Your Back N 2 It will be released through Turnstile on the 20 February.