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Who shaped them

Perfume Genius

Perfume Genius

Since 2008 · United States

Mike Hadreas began recording as Perfume Genius from his mother's home in Washington after moving back following a period of addiction and instability, building early songs around minimal piano and unflinchingly personal lyrics about trauma, sexuality, and recovery. Their story

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Who they shaped

Nobody on the map lists them as an influence yet.

Behind them, left to right: Björk, Low, Patti Smith, Liz Phair, Stars of the Lid, Talk Talk.

The bigger the face, the stronger the proof: they said it themselvesreporteda critic, or widely accepted

No Shape cover

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No Shape (2017)

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No Shape trades Perfume Genius's earlier minimalism for dense, maximalist production without losing the raw emotional directness underneath it. "Slip Away" builds from a hushed opening into a euphoric, string-laced climax, Mike Hadreas's voice moving from vulnerable to triumphant within a single song. The record treats joy and trauma as inseparable rather than opposing forces, letting both coexist in the same swelling arrangements without either one canceling the other out. It remains the album that pushed Hadreas's music from intimate confession toward something closer to full-blown, unguarded catharsis.

Sleeve notes

Perfume Genius

No Shape · 2017

Mike Hadreas began recording as Perfume Genius from his mother's home in Washington after moving back following a period of addiction and instability, building early songs around minimal piano and unflinchingly personal lyrics about trauma, sexuality, and recovery. He has cited Xiu Xiu directly, saying he loves how "intense and visceral and over the top" their songs can get, a quality that increasingly shaped his own music's willingness to push past conventional restraint.

No Shape, released in 2017, marked a significant turn in Hadreas's sound and brought him to his widest audience yet. Despite frequent critical comparisons to Talk Talk, Hadreas has said he had never actually heard the band before fans began making the connection, a case of critics hearing a lineage the artist arrived at independently. Perfume Genius has continued expanding that sound across subsequent releases and collaborations.

Since 2008 · United States