“[Mike Hadreas] wants to be the musician he would’ve [needed] as a teenager. And I think he’s doing that. He’s singing about things that no other gay male singer is singing about. About his pain, about his experiences.”
Alan Wyffels, The FADER
"Slip Away" offers the first glimpse of Seattle-based solo artist Perfume Genius's upcoming fourth album No Shape (2017): a clear sonic departure from his previous LP Too Bright (2014). The issues that were starkly foregrounded in the confessionalism of his previous album with songs like "Queen" - homophobia, heteronormativity, the difficult path towards self-acceptance - are now only alluded to in the form of a vague external threat: 'Don't look back, I want to break free/ If you'll never see 'em coming/ You'll never have to hide'.
The track's maximalist instrumentation (hurried drums, glittering synths, creaking doors and swirling pianos) accompanies Hadreas' carpe diem imperatives, which call for an escape from the limitations of a painful past and an embrace of unbridled future opportunities:
'Don't hold back, I want to break freeCause it's singing through your bodyAnd I'm carried by the soundEvery jump, every single beatThey were born from your bodyAnd I'm carried by the soundOh, ooh loveThey'll never break the shape we takeOh, oohBaby let all them voices slip away'
Lyrics: Genius
This psychic odssey is literalized in the music video (which was directed by Andrew Thomas Huang): it features Hadreas and a female friend dancing in soft-hued woods (in clothing that would easily fit into the decadance of pre-French Revolution aristocratic opulence) and passing each others peaches, and then fleeing from two 'little schoolboys' played by "old men that kind of look like Donald Trump". The duo escape, but the burning sunlight that vanquishes the two schoolboys also leads to a forest fire.
Hadreas survives in the video, but his ability to thrive (in life, and as a musician) appears to depend on the strength of the solidarity he achieves with supportive allies and lovers. It's bright, bold, campy, driven by adrenaline, incandescent, expansive and colorful - precisely the kind of aesthetic catalyst that might be needed to firmly transcend the clawings of a dark past:
“I have no reason to be as melancholy as I am. When l objectively look at it, I’m contented. I’m just sick of it…I don’t know, man. I’m trying to figure it out. I think a lot of it is this feeling that there’s something wrong with me — that I’m a bad person, that I’m not right. You know, I don’t feel like I make sense in the world. I don’t feel like I look right, I don’t feel like I act right or do right. It’s very frustrating to me that I just walk around with this all the time. I’ve made shit-loads of progress, but I want all of it to go. I’m not happy with it just being better. I want to be a ball of light just floating around".
Mike Hadreas, The FADER
