The line between pop and avant-garde music can be breached by as little — or as much — as a change in tempo, a jagged chord change, an inscrutable lyric or a sudden, exaggerated sonic effect.
All of that and more show up on “Too Bright,” the third album by Perfume Genius, the working name of Washington-based singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas. “Too Bright” is a record with contrasts: pianos set apart from synthesizers, saturated vocal effects giving way to clarity, grooves that appear and disappear. The contradictions are often lyrical ones: “Angel just above the grid,” he sings on “I Decline,” the opening track, over a simple piano progression, “open, smiling, reach out.” As the pulse disintegrates, Hadreas intones a final, oppositional line, at his own pace: “No thanks, I decline.”
Perfume Genius’ previous two albums, “Learning” and “Put Your Back N 2 It,” were full of gorgeous, spare piano and vocal laments and inwardly focused dirges; they also weren’t nearly as colorful or brazenly extroverted as “Too Bright.” “No family is safe when I sashay,” Hadreas sings on “Queen,” the track that’s received by far the most attention, over a buzzing synth-bass, rock drums and a gentle counter-melody. “Too Bright” is (partly) about wresting power back from its traditional sources, and its cover art — Hadreas, who is gay, looking confident in a tight, sequined, sleeveless shirt — announces it proudly.
“If people see me as some sea-witch with penis tentacles that are always prodding and poking and seeking to convert the muggles,” Hadreas said in the press release that accompanied “Too Bright,” “well, here she comes!”
Third albums — think “London Calling,” “OK Computer,” “Born to Run,” “Electric Ladyland,” and so on — are historically good places to stretch out. While writing, “the more tender and soulful songs were just me and my piano, maybe a couple of ghostly harmonies on top,” Hadreas said. “But a lot of the more wild songs were fleshed out in terms of mood, tone, the dynamics of loud and quiet. They were sort of the diet version of what ended up on the album.”
Hadreas ended up with near-polished demos of each of the songs.
“Basically how I write is by recording them,” he said. “A lot of those songs came to be because I was messing around with vocal effects and distorting my piano. The sounds I got from that would inspire the lyrics.” P.J. Harvey was an inspiration; final tracks were recorded with Portishead’s Adrian Utley, U.K.-based producer Ali Chant — who has worked with Harvey — and John Parish, Harvey’s drummer. But the songs stayed faithful to Hadreas’ demos. “Pretty much everything was there [on the demos], and it was clear what I wanted. I liked how experimental some of the songs were.”
Hadreas even kept the mistakes. “I ended up liking those and keeping them in,” he said. “I didn’t want to mess with that too much, but I wanted to amp up those parts. I wanted to take them even further in the studio. I wasn’t technically capable of doing that at home.”
Perfume Genius performs at the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden on Monday, March 23, at 9 p.m., with Jenny Hval opening. They’ve already toured the U.S. and Europe behind “Too Bright,” and recently returned from Australia, but the new sounds on the album required a few tweaks — “just figuring out how to do my new songs,” Hadreas said, “especially because they required a lot more instrumentation. I’m doing a lot more just straight-up singing. I’m singing a lot of notes that I wasn’t used to singing live, and doing a lot of screaming, which I wasn’t used to doing as well.”
Even performing has become an extension of Hadreas’ new-found extroversion.
“Things that would originally bring up anxiety for me, the things that were nerve-wracking, are old hat in some ways,” he said. “I’m having more fun now. I go a little more nuts on stage. I still get pretty nervous, but you can turn that more into excitement now. We’re pretty practiced. I’ve got my outfits ready and [things] like that.”
Still, Hadreas said, all the attention and critical praise is surreal.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever really stopped to think about it too much,” Hadreas said. “I stop enough to be grateful but not enough to be overwhelmed by all the opportunities I’ve had.”
PERFUME GENIUS performs at the Ballroom at the Outer Space in Hamden on Monday, March 23, with Jenny Hval opening. Showtime is 9 p.m. Tickets are $13-$15. Information: manicproductions.org.
