The promotional materials for Perfume Genius' Learning show the project's sole member, 26-year-old Seattle resident Mike Hadreas, shirtless and with a black eye. It's as evocative an image as the Strokes wearing leather jackets and Velvet Underground t-shirts or Animal Collective wearing tribal masks. The songs on Hadreas' full-length debut are eviscerating and naked, with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterizations delivered in a voice that ranges from an ethereal croon to a slightly cracked warble. The production value is lo-fi, although not in a staticky, antagonistic way. Instead, the crude recording adds intimacy, to the point where you can hear Hadreas' feet on the pedals of the piano that plays a central role in many of his songs. This music sounds personal.
On paper, Perfume Genius would seem to cater to a small niche, but Hadreas has an innate gift for melody that ups the accessibility considerably. Many of these understated songs turn out to be surprisingly persistent earworms, with tunes that are refreshingly uncluttered. The song structures of cuts like "Learning", "Mr. Peterson", and "Write to Your Brother" mostly sticking to short melodic sequences that slowly work their way into your headspace. This simplicity puts greater focus on Hadreas' lyrics, and they deserve the attention. He's tackling emotionally fraught topics here-- the struggle to gain acceptance from loved ones, suicide, molestation, substance abuse, and questionable relationships with figures of authority, to name a few. "Write to Your Brother" addresses a person named Mary to act upon the titular command, reminding her to tell him, "Mom treats you like a lover/ That you have to hide all the mouthwash from her." "Mr. Peterson", the album's most heartbreakingly direct cut, concerns a teenager's sexual relationship with a teacher, ending with a grisly death.
Hadreas has a knack for detail that recalls Sufjan Stevens' more intimate and non-big-tent moments, and he knows how to tell a story. One comes away [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| from "When" remembering "the line of the trees/ Above the end of the street," as a mother steps into her yard "holding her daughter." It's the small things that stand out: the Joy Division mixtape in "Mr. Peterson", the pressed flower concealed within a letter in "Write to Your Brother", the paycheck held by the about-to-vanish titular subject in "Perry". These songs touch on a range of emotions, but the fine details make them hit harder.
For all its fragile moments and depictions of emotional instability, Learning is an unbelievably warm-sounding record. That warmth especially emanates during the album's more textural moments, like the pulsing synth dirge "No Problem" or the impressionistic ambient smears of "Gay Angels". On the latter cut, Hadreas comes closest to achieving transcendence, as near-wordless cries tangle and moan around drones and low-mixed rumbles of thunder. However upward he hits, though, Hadreas remains down to earth, whispering harshly at the track's end, "It's okay/ It's okay." In another artist's hands, this might come off as melodramatic playacting. Hadreas turns it into one of the album's most affecting songs, as this talented new artist uses those two words to evoke Learning's ultimate mindset: Today is terrible, but tomorrow can bring anything.
