Perfume Genius: “Grid”

Imagine the songs of Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, as pretty, translucent pearls, each encasing a muted glow. They are jelly orbs embedded in shells that lie at the bottom of a very melancholy sea. Now see “Grid” as the wrecking ball to the quiet, sad beauty that Perfume Genius has created. Deep synth bass notes send ripples through the current. Then, quite unexpectedly, a sharp scream pierces the outer layer of these orbs, and soft light rushes out in harsh halogen beams.

“Grid,” the second single off Perfume Genius’s new album, Too Bright, is the sonic representation of Hadreas’s outer layers cracking to what feels like the point of no re-sealing. It is discordant and heavy—a striking contrast to the sparse minimalism of most Perfume Genius songs—and everything you could want as the soundtrack for the sensitive underdog’s good fight against injustice and oppression. In Hadreas’s case, it’s his struggle with finding social acceptance as an openly gay male which, for him, seems to necessitate a violent artistic undoing—smashing all the pretty exteriors to bits, revealing the power that lies beneath.