By Matt Mitchell“To be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly,” Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong wrote in his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Perfume Genius, the performer born Mike Hadreas, evokes that same emotion onstage. Since his debut, 2010’s Learning, Hadreas has deconstructed the banalities of attraction and attractiveness through human movement, and his catalog is an exclamation on how our bodily prisons can become delicate and powerful. Hadreas’s new album, Ugly Season, which he lovingly refers to as “the dance record,” was written and recorded just before 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, but it is much more akin to the melodrama of a ballet or concerto than that project’s fluttering, beguiling grandeur. Despite the two-year gap between them, the records were originally slated to be released within a year of each other — and the pop alchemy of Immediately was fashioned in response to the process of composing Ugly Seaso… Click below to read the full story from MTV News
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Perfume Genius’s Unknowable Ecstasy
