Having listened to the Perfume Genius début album Learning, a collection of songs put to piano by Seattle-based Mike Hadreas, I was unusually eager to see the artist himself when I found he was to play the Cube Cinema in Bristol. What kind of a person could have created this unique body of songs?

With its simple jabbing piano scales and chords, the album sounds as if it was written in a lonely school music room after the last bell has gone. Part Cat Power, part Elliot Smith, the music and Hadreas's singing has a deep indulgent sentimentality recalling the fears, yearnings and confusion of adolescence. His lyrics, however, give him away as a mature songwriter and wordsmith (he is in fact 24 years old). He narrates his songs with succinct, telling observations, slowly disclosing his meaning not by what is said, but implied. He delves into the lives of quiet desperation led by his friends, family and teachers with a nostalgia right in the middle of tears and joy. It's navel gazing, true, but of admirable quality.

In the Cube's intimate auditorium the night is kicked off by London-based support act, Lonely Galaxy, who set the formula for the rest of the night: two musicians, one of them the principle singer-songwriter, no drums and minimal amplification. It is so quiet when the guitar and violin duo begin to play that the audience collectively holds its breath.

The songs of Lonely Galaxy are held together by simple guitar picking and strumming while the singing and lyrics bring to mind the directness and honesty of Canadian folk singer Dan Mangan. Over this scaffolding the violinist wove boastful flourishes of vibrato, adorning the subtle songs while rocking backwards and forwards with his eyes closed. Enjoyable though the 30 minute set was, I was left feeling that this pair have yet to fully cement their sound.

He describes the experience like some “wonderful nightmare”

True to the etiquette of what indie musicians should look like, when Perfume Genius takes the stage Hadreas is pale, nervous and uncommunicative, a loose fitting t-shirt hung on his thin frame. He is accompanied by his backing singer and synth player Alan Wyffels, who in contrast appears a tower of calm. They begin with “Look Out, Look Out” and probably owing to nerves this song is more of a false start than an opener. Halfway through the first line, Hadreas behind his keyboard breaks into a stifled laugh and starts again, yet continues to sound as if he has a frog in his throat. Afterwards, in a bid to explain his nerves, he engages in one of his few efforts at between-song banter. Stating with charming vulnerability that the spotlight he is under prevents him from seeing the audience, he describes the experience like some “wonderful nightmare”.

Their next song “Learning”, the album's title track, sees him hitting his stride, coaxing ethereal syncopated melodies out of the keys and prophesying in a honey-coated American accent: “No one will hear all your crying until you take your last breath.” Wyffels provides some great baritone harmonies and atmospheric synth parts. Following this is the album's most powerful track, “Mr Peterson”, a song about the friendship between a troubled adult and teenager that ends with the former's suicide. Whether the song has any basis in reality, Hadreas plays it like an epitaph, his boyish slightly lisping voice wavering with emotion.

The rest of the set continues in this fashion, Hadreas occasionally sending darting looks across the stage to Wyffels for reassurance, the pair playing together at the same keyboard and microphone for a few songs. At one point, Hadreas picks up a guitar and plucks a tune I do not recognise from the album.

The set lasted a short 40 minutes and ended with a reluctant encore of “Write to Your Brother”, after which the retiring Perfume Genius thanked the audience and left the stage. Hadreas was tellingly eager to be out of the limelight that his music and album – one of the best of this year – has thrust him into.

However brief and uncertain the performance, what was in no doubt was the calibre of musicianship we witnessed. It was a night of indie navel gazing at its finest, full of lingering melody and awkward humanity.

Learning is out now on Matador.
myspace.com/kewlmagik

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BRISTOL & BATH // 18 MAY 2012

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Live Review: Perfume Genius

26 October 2010

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