In the span of six critically-beloved albums, Mike Hadreas has made Perfume Genius an unmissable force in the current era of music. With the continued contributions of his partner Alan Wyffels on piano, broadly representing the roots of the project – as well as Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy on guitar, spearheading its growth – the project continues to evolve, long since having transcended its solo-piano roots and morphed into something that can take nearly any shape, which arguably has always been part of the point. In his first visit to Boston during the era of 2025 album Glory, Hadreas puts himself on display in more ways than one – not only does he bear the inescapable songwriter’s burden of presenting internal struggle for all to see, he’s established a moving centerpiece around which Perfume Genius’ entire performance for the night revolves – quite literally.
Beginning the night with the haunting and dehumanizing ‘In a Row’ into emotional centrepiece ‘It’s a Mirror’, Hadreas heads to the back-center of the stage and begins singing as he circles around a small area – it’s only two-and-a-half songs in I realize this is a mechanical feat; having seen Perfume Genius before I simply have come to associate the project with elegant, deliberate movements such as these. In my mind up ‘til this point, Hadreas has simply been doing these revolutions himself in his particular vein of slow-motion.
The stunning ‘It’s a Mirror’ and the ensuing ‘No Front Teeth’ share a common acoustic-guitar accentuation, but for the latter Hadreas for the first time involves the large pale-blue medicine ball lingering on the stage, rolling back and forth. Wyffels takes on a smaller keyboard for this one, while Duffy ends up standing and shredding alongside the band’s bassist. Hadreas crawls back to the metal chair he’s placed at the center of the spinning dais in his absence near the end as well: he takes to it inverted, collapsing further by degrees with each measure of the song, til his upturned figure is all but on the ground – in a way this posturing recalls the gorgeously-oversharp cover- and key-art for Glory by Cody Chrichtloe.
After an introductory portion which centers new songs from Glory, Hadreas opts to branch out; the promise that “they’ll never break the shape we take,” in ‘Slip Away’ rings all the more true even now with the climate into which America finds itself backsliding. ‘Left for Tomorrow’ begins with Hadreas on solo piano as he was at the start of the project, but Duffy soon rejoins on guitar – don’t mistake it, though: with nothing but his voice and a keyboard, Hadreas can still concoct music that grabs the heart like no other. The ¾ tempo of ‘Clean Heart’ feels almost jaunty or swashbuckling sheerly by comparison, but it too dominates one’s focus. Hadreas drags a step-stool he’s brought to supplement the chair up to the still-slowly-rotating platform, leaving them interlocked there – but the newcomer unceremoniously falls to the ground. A second try during the course of the song proves more successful.
The next section of the show highlights some bass-forward mindsets behind Set My Heart On Fire Immediately – ‘On the Floor’ uses it as an undeniable, danceable propellant, while ‘Describe’ employs it in a more blunt but still more glorious fashion as a wall of sound. ‘Describe’ sees the band bathed in red light from the four LED pillars behind them – Hadreas’ movements around the microphone once again feel as if they’re in half the framerate of real-life, and again he finds his way to the floor, even as the band ushers itself into the heartbeat-like intro of ‘Wreath’, the song from which the title of No Shape derives. The following duo is ‘Otherside’ into ‘Capezio’, two especially-spacious songs, and especially during the former the crowd is all but fully silent in its pauses.
For the main set, the final duo of songs begins with ‘Eye in the Wall’ – Duffy begins letting their notes really ring out, physically shaking the guitar. Hadreas wrestles on the floor with his chair, and by the end he’s refitted it to the dais, perceptible now often only as a pair of legs spiking into the air. It’s the perfect segue into the murk of ‘My Body’, which through the years has become and remained one of the best Perfume Genius live songs. He crawls from his perch with a demeanor commensurate to the song’s sinister pace. I once read that the difference between a simmer and a boil is the difference between a smile and a grin – or was it a smile and a laugh? – either way, while the recorded version of ‘My Body’ has teeth, here they’re all visible and dripping with accrued venom.
Having already concocted an essentially-complete setlist touching on all the things that made and make Perfume Genius essential, Hadreas still elects to return, first presenting the audience with a gorgeous cover of Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’. This is a song that carries an immense legacy, a favorite that manages to propagate from generation to generation – and as good covers so often do, Hadreas seeks not to replicate it note-for-note, but instead recreate it with his own brand of delicate gorgeousness. They close with the evergreen ‘Queen’ – more than anything, an unabashed celebration of self and identity, staring down detractors with an unmistakable gleam in the eye. And truly, zooming out one scale of magnification, that gleam shines over the entire work of Perfume Genius, which remains, regardless of entry point, a deeply-needed and ever-compelling avenue of expression.
Photos and words by Collin Heroux