There are trends. There are hypes. There are avant-guarde experiments. And then there’re records which surpass all of them, going straight to the heart, beyond fashion, beyond time. A couple of years ago Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, sent us a breathtaking letter of heartbreak and despair in the shape of “Learning”, a collection of home-recorded songs, just vocals and piano, which sounded even more fragile as the album was actually mastered from second-generation mp3s. An exercise in self-therapy which struck a chord with thousands of listeners. Still in his early 20s, Mike’s exploration of the dark parts – as he would call them – reaches now an arresting high with his second album, “Put Your Back N 2 It”. Richer in its arrangements and recording, his voice has found a confident and, dare we say it, mature balance. The minor chords give way surprisingly to some major ones, and you can actually feel like there could be hope at the end of this journey. Even if it still means having to go through more twists and turns (you may be aware that the album ad was rejected by Google/YouTube as being “not family safe” and “promoting mature sexual themes”). Disarmigly honest and strongly opinionated, as you would probably suspect listening to his songs, Mike kindly spent some time talking to us in the middle of a long american tour. Read the rest of this entry »