Matador
There’s an inherent contradiction in music that Mike Hadreas the sole member of Perfume Genius seems to instinctively understand: The heaviest emotions often come from the lightest sounds. Most of Learning consists of Hadreas’s voice — somewhere between Sufjan Stevens and Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue on the wispiness scale — and a skeletal piano but those feather-light components provide a sledgehammer’s worth of heft.
Learning is an album of tragedies large and small. Because of the intimate arrangements it’s tempting to read them as autobiographical but whether that’s true is beside the point. What matters is that Hadreas sells each moment as if it is deeply personal. From the teacher-student relationship in “Mr. Peterson” to the dysfunctional family in “Write to Your Brother” and the more eliptical “Never Did” each track is unflinching in its commitment to heartbreak. Remarkably though after 10 songs of sombre piano and soul-crushing storytelling the end result isn’t maudlin in the least. Hadreas has created real beauty in what could’ve been an exercise in wallowing.
