Goff's Pick of the Week- Learning by Perfume Genius

 There are two differences between my listening experiences with electronic soul artist SBTRKT’s debut and solo pianist Mike Hadreas aka Perfume Genius’ Learning. I ordered a few cds off of Amazon.com the other week, those being the two that I just mentioned. One came immediately, and was immediately enjoyable, and that was SBTRKTs showing. The other however took much longer to arrive and by the sixth day (aren’t I impatient?) that it hadn’t shown up I began to worry. What had happened? Was there a problem with shipping? Had they never received the order? Or perhaps has Tom Hanks got it on a deserted island somewhere? Considering that the CD had shipped from Kentucky, this third option seemed unlikely, but nevertheless I had my concerns. On the seventh day when I received my email that a package for me was received at the front desk I rushed right down and the wait was over. So for you keeping track at home the slow delivery time was the first difference.

The second difference however is a little more interesting, and that is how the album revealed itself to me. To call Perfume Genius’ Learning immediately enjoyable as I did SBTRKT’s debut is about the same as calling Schindler’s List a fun movie or Ulysses a good beach book. No, Learning, as the title implies takes a little time to get used to, which as it turns out, makes it the perfect title. Hadreas tackles some seriously emotional topics on his debut, including but not limited to; suicide, molestation, and substance abuse. He comes across as someone who has been through a lot, but is suddenly starting to find his voice and identity. Its not uncommon that an artist will find themselves through their craft, it is however rare that they can capture that experience of growth on tape, letting the audience in right at the moment that they are most vulnerable. In this way Learning is a two way street, its Hadreas learning about himself as he grows as a person and as an artist, and it is us the listener learning about him at the exact same time.

Whats so strange probably about Learning though is how catchy some of the tunes are, especially the darker ones. In a music industry where dark and catchy are usually in opposition to each other Hadreas blurs the line with Mr. Peterson, a story about a sexual relationship between a boy and a teacher that ends in the teachers suicide. That track is absolutely remarkable, here are the lyrics:

My work came back from class
With notes attached
Of a place and time
Or how my body kept him up at night

He let me smoke weed in his truck
If I could convince him I loved him enough
Enough, enough, enough, enough

He made me a tape of Joy Division
He told there was a part of him missing
When I was sixteen
He jumped off a building

Mr Petersen
I know you were ready to go

I hope there’s room for you up above
Or down below.

If you read that and thought gee, sounds like a toe tapper, than you have serious problems… but you are not wrong. Hadreas’ sense of melody and lo-fi production quality piano make for a really good listen, that if paired with different lyrics could have been a radio friendly hit. The most moving part of the song comes during the second verse, at the repetition of enough. It is a pun, the first enough finishes the line “If I could convince him I loved him enough” and is followed by a pause. Afterwards Hadreas comes back in repeating the line with an understated panic as if to say “Ive had enough”. Its chilling, really just chilling, made even more so by the fact that after the last enough, which sounds so honest and sincere in its delivery, Hadreas misses a beat on piano like he is struggling to get past the line. Whether that was done intentionally is hard to say, but it matters little, the track is fantastic through and through.

Another song with great lyrics on the album is the track Write to Your Brother, which has an equally unnerving line about incest in it, and comes from the same place in terms of songwriting talent that crafted Mr. Peterson. There seem to be two distinct types of tracks present on Learning, the previously mentioned poppy yet dark tracks and the extremely ambient. The ambient songs shine through on the album like poetry without any words, they are cathartic and hopeful on a record that is otherwise bleak. It makes for an interesting mix of songs. I almost wrote here the sentence “The change in pace also does a good job of mixing up the album and preventing its sound from stagnating” but on second thought I don’t think that could happen on a record that is just under thirty minutes long. It is fitting for it to be that length though, another album that it reminds me of, the fantastic Pink Moon by Nick Drake, clocks in at only twenty eight minutes. There is also a connection between the sparseness of both recordings, where Drake used guitar and the occasional piano, Hadreas uses piano and the occasional electronic swell. Whats more, Perfume Genius really deserves the comparison, Pink Moon is an absolute classic, one of the saddest albums ever crafted, and Hadreas isn’t all that far off from that.