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a r t i s t :: Perfume Genius
t i t l e :: Put Your Back N 2 It
d a t e :: 2012-02-21
l a b e l :: Matador
g e n r e :: Indie
s o u r c e :: WEB
b i t r a t e :: 320 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: LAME
t r a c k s :: 12
p l a y t i m e :: 32:23
s i z e :: 79.76MB
tracklist
1 AWOL Marine 2:47
2 Normal Song 3:13
3 No Tear 1:49
4 17 2:30
5 Take Me Home 2:40
6 Dirge 3:16
7 Dark Parts 3:09
8 All Waters 2:10
9 Hood 2:00
10 Put Your Back N2 It 3:09
11 Floating Spit 3:14
12 Sister Song 2:26
releasenotes
How do we deal with personal trauma? After it's over, what comes next? These
are some of the Big Questions Seattle singer/songwriter Mike Hadreas addresses
on his second album as Perfume Genius. Put Your Back N 2 It follows Hadreas'
overlooked 2010 debut, Learning, and it feels like a proper sequel to that
album's suite of dysfunction and devastation. On his first album, Hadreas
tackled subjects such as molestation, substance abuse, suicide, the
complications of inappropriate sexual relationships, and the struggle for
acceptance from those you love. The morose subject matter and melodic
simplicity of Learning's piano-based songs drew comparisons to indie-pop
artists like Stephin Merritt and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's Owen
Ashworth. But Hadreas' ability to set a scene and convey detail, which brought
to mind Sufjan Stevens circa Seven Swans, lent the songs extra force. There
were moments of impressionistic, synth-smeared beauty on that first record,
but the overriding sense of despair and hopelessness could be overwhelming. On
Put Your Back N 2 It, there's a crack of light coming through the darkness.
Hadreas is still exploring the more harrowing corners of human behavior. "Dark
Parts" details the abuse his mother suffered at the hands of her grandfather;
opener "AWOL Marine" takes inspiration from a tape of homemade pornography
that Hadreas viewed, in which one of the participants admits, camera still
rolling, that he's just trying to get medication for his wife. "Floating Spit"
also deals with drug addiction, "Take Me Home" explores prostitution in the
context of the need to be loved, while "17" uses a metaphor of a body stuffed
into a violin, covered in semen, and hung up on a fence to shine a light on
corrosive self-loathing. So don't let the whimsical album title fool you: If
you're looking for something low-key to vibe out to, you've come to the wrong
place.
The "light" the album allows has to do with how Hadreas approaches the
material. He has a brilliant feel for poetic imagery ("The hands of God were
bigger than grandpa's eyes/ But still he broke the elastic on your waist,"
from "Dark Parts", is particularly haunting), but he's mostly moved away from
storytelling to explore emotional themes at their most fundamental. Put Your
Back N 2 It is an album about love-- what happens when we feel sheltered by
it, how we fail to love ourselves and the people around us-- but amidst the
heartache and bruised tenderness, there's hope, too. Hadreas sums it all up in
the hollowed-out torch song "No Tear": "I will carry on with grace."
For all its violence, Back radiates warmth. Much of the beauty is due to the
expanded instrumentation, from the swooning, countryish guitar bends of "Take
Me Home" to the interspersed snare rolls on "No Tear". The brutal low fidelity
of Learning is gone, replaced with clarity and sonic intimacy that, when
paired with these rich songs, raises every hair on the back of your neck. The
more expansive sound gives room for experimentation, from the submerged
electronic percussion on "Floating Spit" (contributed by UK producer David
Edwards, aka Minotaur Shock) to the robust and surprising full-band blast of
"Hood". The latter, with its bloom-and-burst structure, is the perfect example
of Hadreas' growth as a melodic songwriter, having moved well beyond the the
functional melodies that marked Learning.
Many of these songs-- "Hood", "All Waters", "Take Me Home", "17"-- forego
resolution and basically build tension and drop everything, in silence.
Hadreas likes to steer clear of cathartic release, since in this world, there
is no easy way out. On "All Waters", he begins singing in a low register and
ends in his highest falsetto, as the song dissolves in wordless cries and
frissons of far-away distortion. The song is a wish for a world where he and
his boyfriend, Alan Wyffels (who also serves as his main musical
collaborator), can hold hands in public without fear, and the lyrics ("When
all waters still/ And flowers cover the earth") suggest that it's not going to
happen any time soon.
Mike Hadreas is gay, and many of the songs here focus on the issues that young
gay men face in their lives (he referred to "17" in a press release as "a gay
suicide letter"), even as Back's sustained exploration of love and hate has
resonance for anyone. There is a lot of him in this music, the minutiae
obviously pulled from a single person's life and experiences. But the album is
less about confession as a form of release and more about trying to bring
something positive into the world. "I don't want it to seem like I've been
through more than other people...", he says in promotional materials for the
album. "Staying healthy can be more depressing and confusing than being fucked
up. But I want to make music that's honest and hopeful."
With so much recent conversation about marriage equality and gay teen suicide,
and with the predictable election-year demonization of homosexuality, Mike
Hadreas' work is not only satisfying on a purely musical level, it also feels
of-the-moment and above all necessary (it's so topical, he found himself in
the middle of a standards-of-decency "family values" battle earlier this year
between his label, Matador, and internet-media titans Google and YouTube).
Independent music has woefully few artists dealing with these issues and
asking difficult questions, and doing so in a context that never forgets about
the importance of songwriting. That's a disappointment, but at least a handful
of people like Hadreas are doing something about it.
Artist-Url: www.matadorrecords.com/perfume_genius
Shop-Url: http://tinyurl.com/6vv8ec4
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