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ESSENTIAL NEW MUSIC

Essential New Music: Perfume Genius’ “No Shape”

After a minute of simple, tender piano and tremulous vocals hearkening to the intimate, wounded balladry of Mike Hadreas’ early albums, No Shape takes an unexpected turn. A sudden, euphoric outpouring of sonic fairy dust emerges, reflecting the dramatic shift in the Seattle songwriter’s working methods that began on 2014’s Too Bright. The evolution only intensifies here, as he swaps out that album’s synthesizer explorations for a vibrantly baroque art-pop palette (strings, harpsichords, bells, electric guitar) that is, if anything, even brighter. The songs—the dense, Kate Bush-y “Wreath,” swooningly opulent beatbox bossa “Just Like Love” and, especially, the cathartic, massively catchy “Slip Away”—largely follow suit, although the album also finds space for Hadreas’ darker and more experimental impulses. And while queerness remains emphatically central to his artistic outlook, it too manifests in ways broader and more expansive than the previous album’s grappling with homophobia in its many forms. Despite lyrics contending with crippling anxiety (“Choir”), suicide (“Valley”) and relationship strife (sumptuous Weyes Blood duet “Sides”), what ultimately emerges is a celebration of the defiant act of loving and living fully in the face of a world gone mad.

—K. Ross Hoffman