Perfume Genius wrestles with Glory at Union Transfer

“If you want to see something this weekend that’ll blow your mind, I have an extra ticket to Perfume Genius on Sunday,” read a text I sent to one of my usual plus ones. Though he was unfamiliar with Perfume Genius’ music, I knew the live show wouldn’t disappoint. The last time I saw this band in 2022, it was a top five memorable concert of the year for me. 

This time around, Perfume Genius, the project of songwriter Mike Hadreas, was promoting this year’s record, Glory. The album’s rollout was quite the event, with two cinematic music videos of the album’s first tracks, setting a chaotic, rural setting for the album. In an orange-hued dream world, Hadreas examines identity through violence and sexuality, and debuts a new costume: a low-rise pair of vintage jeans, perfect for allowing our protagonist his “signature hip move,” but too low to be broadcast on television.

You wouldn’t guess Hadreas was shy from his extravagant performance at Union Transfer, twisting and convulsing his petite frame, tangling himself up in a mess of extension chords and fumbling over a limp exercise ball. But it’s all there in his music. “What do I get out of being established? I still run and hide when a man’s at the door,” Hadreas sings on Glory’s opening track and likely thesis, “It’s A Mirror.” The sung poem that ends the album, in it’s five lines, includes the phrase “guest of body,” pointing again to Hadreas’ confrontation with the physical world. 

In their review of the album, Pitchfork emphasized an interview Hadreas gave with The Guardian back in January in which he expresses a relatable trauma of returning to life after the isolation of the pandemic. “How do I engage, how do I be inside of my relationships, inside of the world, a part of things more, even though I’m scared?”

Though Perfume Genius only squirms in these questions instead of answering them on Glory, it’s his live performance that offers the most resolution. How does one suffering from overanalyzing their physical form — “I feel like I write a lot about like… ‘What if I was vapor?'” Hadreas told Stereogum — perform on a stage? You stop taking yourself so seriously. “All that spiraling… it took me a long time to realize that’s a form of selfishness. Just because I’m thinking really bad about myself, I thought ‘That’s not ego.’ But it is.”

Written by Hadreas on piano to leave room for his band to explore, the songs of Glory came alive at Union Transfer on Sunday, and in a way that felt very apropros during Pride Month. See below for a photo gallery of the night and setlist. And if you notice, yes, that is a Mazzy Star cover in the encore.