Perfume Genius – Hoxton Hall, London 13/07/10

Tonight the inner chamber of an undersized music hall on the seedier end of a historic East End market street at the back end of Hoxton turns out to be a surprisingly fitting stopover for Seattle-born Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius. Perched on his hard-seated piano stool like a restless 10 year old at his grade 5 piano recital, Hadreas seems made for the miniature stage and municipal setting. But despite the low key vibe and the most unassuming audience you’re likely to find this side of Old Street, he is by all accounts terrified. Perhaps rightly so, given the heartfelt desperation and emotional stickiness characterising debut album Learning which we’re all (patiently) waiting for him to reproduce, live, for one of the first times ever.

As Hadreas turns nervously to the guy who’s joined him on stage to play tonight, it seems that they might not pull this off. Hadreas actually shudders, but then he begins. It might be the fact that these two communicate only through touch and gestures, or that Hadreas doesn’t utter a word between songs, but there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that anyone’s going to be talking, no, breathing, during this performace. Beers aren’t swigged, brows aren’t wiped and Hadreas isn’t giving us a break. The songs are coming out back to back – he wants to get down from that piano stool. Neck straining upwards with each barely uttered word, pointy frame wracked with tension inside his oversized jumper, we collectively lean in closer to catch Hadreas’ drift because he might not sing this twice. With a voice this delicate and powerful, even the fumbles sounds necessary.

From the moment he puts his fingers to his keyboard it’s clear these lyrics aren’t about anybody else – each one is a painful self-revelation. And what revelations. After each song Hadreas visibly deflates, shoulders dropping like a puppet’s as he lets go of one demon before looking to the next. He’s akin to the kind of kid who won’t put his bear down till he’s systematically unpicked the seams and pulled out all the stuffing. Which is why watching Hadreas edges on the voyeuristic. What sounds elegantly plain-spoken on recording becomes sickeningly confessional in the flesh. On ‘Lookout, Lookout’ there’s no way to skip over Hadreas’ ominous refrain “Lookout, Lookout/There are murders about…And Brian’s face down/Keep your wits/He will not be missed/He didn’t have a family to begin with.” ‘Mr Petersen’ too is unequivocally dark: “He made me a tape of Joy Division / He told me there was part of him missing / When I was 16… He jumped off a building.” Like spoken diary entries, uncensored and announced regretfully with the pain of hindsight, it’s hard to listen, harder not to.

Only after the rapturous applause for the meltingly melancholic title track ‘Learning’ does Hadreas allow himself a smile. It’s like we’ve given him a puppy (somebody definitely should.) So listening to these pocket-sized bombshells drop one after the other isn’t voyeurism, it’s therapy – for Hadreas and, going on the man crying on his boyfriend’s shoulder behind me, for some of the audience too.