Mistletone

PERFUME GENIUS + SPECIAL GUEST HAND HABITS TOUR DATES:

BALLARAT: WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 3 @ HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE. Tickets on sale here. Presented by Triple R.
MELBOURNE: THURSDAY DECEMBER 4 @ THE FORUM. Tickets on sale here. Presented by Triple R.
MEREDITH MUSIC FESTIVAL: FRIDAY DECEMBER 5. Ballot here.
BRISBANE: SUNDAY DECEMBER 7 @ THE PRINCESS. Tickets on sale here.
SYDNEY: TUESDAY DECEMBER 9 @ SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE. Tickets on sale here.

Mistletone and Triple R proudly present the return of Perfume Genius: Mike Hadreas in all his glory, with the fiercest band he has ever assembled, plus special guest Hand Habits.

“A bona fide rock’n’roll frontman whose charisma is too big to fit on a standard-sized stage” – SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

As Perfume Genius, Mike Hadreas has made romantic and curious music that explores the intimacies, challenges, and joys of queer life. His feel for the texture of human relations, and his ability to articulate a lifetime of connection in a handful of words has made him a Grammy nominee and an icon of the queer indie music scene. 

On his latest album, Glory, he writes from a new vantage point, on the other side of struggle, with sweetness, menace, and comedy. Writer Daniel Felsenthal calls it “a collection of new standards for gay romantics and old souls adrift in the 21st century,” Pitchfork hailed the “detailed, moody technicolour he’s mastered,” and The Guardian called him the “consummate chronicler of 21st-century sensuality.” As The Saturday Paper stated, “Mike Hadreas has spent his life navigating the torments of his physical being to create albums of rare beauty.“

Glory is a bold and unflinching new chapter in the Perfume Genius story. Produced by Blake Mills and released on longtime label home Matador / Remote Control, it’s the seventh studio album in an immaculate body of work which includes collaborations with such artists as including Bronski Beat, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Christine And The Queens, Sharon Van Etten, Weyes Blood, Cate Le Bon and most recently, reuniting with Aldous Harding for the dumbfounding “No Front Teeth”.  

Promoting his string of beloved, increasingly ambitious Perfume Genius albums during the past decade and a half — touring the world, dwelling in the public eye — clashed with Mike’s innate impulse toward isolation. For Glory, he discovered a new songwriting process because he welcomed the dynamics of a group, leaving room in his compositions for his friends to flesh out the arrangements. 

Mike says: “I’m more engaged with the band and the audience. I’m still on some wild tear, but there’s more access and it’s more collaborative, in a way that makes it better, but also scary—because it feels more vulnerable.” 

The album delivered three standout singles; ‘It’s a Mirror’, named Best New Track by Pitchfork, praised for its muscular, twang-tinged sound and Hadreas’ most confident vocal performance to date. ‘No Front Teeth’, a haunting duet with Aldous Harding, accompanied by a striking video directed by Cody Critcheloe (Queen) and ‘Clean Heart’, a swelling, wordless meditation on the power of time to heal.

If Glory is an uncommonly personal record, it’s because it reflects on Hadreas’ own anxieties and those of the world at large: the fears that come with success, and also a tenor of paranoia that pervades the zeitgeist. Glory feels like a collection of new standards for gay romantics and old souls adrift in the 21st century.

The debut Perfume Genius album Learning, released in 2010 via long-time label home Matador, instantly caught the attention of critics. “The songs on Hadreas’ full-length debut are eviscerating and naked,” said Pitchfork, “with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterisations”. These descriptors became the hallmarks of Perfume Genius’ unique ability to convey emotional vulnerability not only lyrically, but with his impressively nuanced vocals. 

His following album, Put Your Back N 2 It was released in 2012 and continued to build both his audience and critical acclaim. 2014’s Too Bright exhibited a massive leap forward in both production and confidence. Co-produced by Adrian Utley of Portishead, the album featured the stand-out single, “Queen”, which quickly became a queer anthem and a powerful statement of being, performed on Late Night with David Letterman. 

In 2017, Perfume Genius released the GRAMMY-nominated No Shape, the Blake Mills-produced album that would crystallise his fanbase world-wide and bring mainstream awareness to his art. “If you listen to the Perfume Genius albums in chronological order, you can hear Hadreas healing himself in real time, moving toward an emancipation that seems, suddenly, to have come to pass,” said The New Yorker. 

With Glory, Mike Hadreas continues to rebuke gay culture’s tendency to view ageing as a tragedy, peering past youth’s debaucherous prerogatives to reveal the possibilities of its aftermath. “There’s a map for the first part,” he says about being young and gay. “There’s books about hustlers and drinking and drugs and going out. And then, after that, there’s not a lot.” 

Glory furthers a concept he began to explore on the monumental Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, recasting life’s lengthy middle as an era of both wizened reflection and of navigating, with a bit more knowledge, the enduring mysteries of closeness, friendship and sex. The way that you live now is OK, this brilliant, generous album tells us, and at the same time, The way you’ll learn how to live in the future will be just fine, too.

One of indie rock’s most quietly dazzling forces, Meg Duffy aka Hand Habits will be performing with their band, sharing songs from their latest album, ‘Blue Reminder,’ as well as doing double duties with their Perfume Genius bandmates.

Based in Los Angeles, the songwriter and guitarist records as Hand Habits, a project that has grown from hushed intimacy into something expansive and commanding. Across acclaimed releases like placeholder and Fun House (Saddle Creek), and the lauded 2023 EP Sugar the Bruise (Fat Possum), Duffy has earned praise for tender lyricism, adventurous guitar work, and fearless honesty. They are also a prolific collaborator, having worked with Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius,Weyes Blood, Sylvan Esso and more.

Mike Hadreas told the New York Times, “I feel very charged by Meg,” noting that playing music alongside another queer person emboldened him onstage. “It’s not the only thing Meg can do, shred, but if a song needs to be driven home, they do that.”

With Blue Reminder, Duffy delivers their most assured and adventurous album yet. The twelve songs explore what it means to find love—and the fear of losing it—balancing quiet anxiety with genuine joy. “I can’t deny these are love songs,” Duffy says, “but they’re also about commitment—to a person, to an idea, to being a more honest version of yourself.”

Musically, Blue Reminder embraces the guitar-forward spirit of ’90s indie rock, while still carrying the introspection that defines Hand Habits. Guitars fuzz and shimmer, drums move to the forefront, horns and Wurlitzers weave through, everything elevated. With contributions from Gregory Uhlmann, Perfume Genius’ Alan Wyffels, and producer Blake Mills, the record blooms with collaboration while standing as Duffy’s clearest vision to date.

Meg Duffy is one of indie rock’s great connectors and doers, an astonishing multi-instrumentalist with unwavering taste who is also a striking songwriter, pairing complete candor with magnetic hooks. A decade ago, just as Duffy released their first album as Hand Habits, they began to emerge as a collaborator on a stunning series of records—The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding, Kevin Morby’s City Music, and Weyes Blood’s Front Row Seat to Earth. During the intervening years, Duffy has remained a linchpin within indie rock, whether touring and recording with Perfume Genius or contributing to records by the likes of Hurray for the Riff Raff, Sylvan Esso, or William Tyler. As Hand Habits, they have also cut work with Claire Rousay, Ryan Hemsworth, and Matt Berninger.

In retrospect, so much of that seems like a preparatory preamble for Blue Reminder, Duffy’s most winning and radiant album yet as Hand Habits. In the past, Duffy has often navigated the travails of romantic hope and loss, rendering feelings inside of bracing country-rock that felt like the flash of a firefly across a night sky. But on Blue Reminder, made as Duffy fell into something like domestic bliss, they celebrate a deeper and more steadfast connection, how the whole world can seem to swim in Technicolor when a relationship feels right. “Will you take me as I am?” Duffy sings, their voice stretching like Aimee Mann’s over a carousel of piano and acoustic strums. “Oscillating between a woman, a child, and a broken man?” On Blue Reminder, Duffy expands the art-pop glow of their songs, radiating in the real-time joy of discovery.

“I recommend playing music with people who are probably better than you are,” jokes Duffy. “All of these musicians are such incredible listeners. They all made me play so much closer to the heart. You know, I learn a lot every time I make a record – about where my comfort zones can be pushed and, maybe more importantly, about trusting the process, trusting other people.”

The twelve songs on Blue Reminder walk a kind of emotional tightrope between hope and a kind of quiet anxiety, the record itself batting around the question of what one does when happiness actually comes knocking. At the core of these songs the genuine joy of love and self-actualization are always balanced against the potential fear of losing those things once you’ve found them. ‘I know the love we lose / Informs who we become,’ Duffy sings on “More Today,” a song whose sentiment seems to infuse the entire record. In tracks like “Way it Goes” and “Wheel of Change” past loves and emotional collapse clear the way for what comes next, while true romantic love — prickly and complicated and deeply illuminating — looms large. 

This collection of songs largely eschew the more insular nature of earlier Hand Habits records, instead veering into the guitar-forward vibe of 90’s indie rock, with deftly assured songs that could exist in the same sonic universe with Aimee Mann or Neko Case, with the sort of left of center shifts in tone and lyrical observations that would not be out of place on a Cate Le Bon tune. Throughout the songs, guitars fuzz, drums move to the forefront, and the occasional horn or wurlitzer pass through. Everything feels elevated. 

While Duffy doesn’t necessarily want the entire narrative around Blue Reminder to circle around romantic love, or to perhaps suggest that it’s only romantic love that allows us to be actualized or fulfilled, it does feel important to celebrate the joy of such things at a time when queer and trans people are largely being vilified. In a moment where there is so much fear and uncertainty, loudly articulating happiness and giving voice to healthy relationships feels like a profound pushback against all the darkness. 

“When I reflect on how society can punish or cruelly imply a brokenness to anyone who lives in the margins of a limited range of what they consider normal, or imply they are the way they are because of a defect or illness, it’s hard not to internalize some of this way of thinking. I’ve done a lot of work to accept myself for who I am, and that I deserve to live as the truest version of myself, and that my mistakes and shortcomings are human, not as a result of my identity. That it is possible for queer/trans people to have healthy, loving, passionate, and functional lives and relationships. That we can be in and contribute to the community. That we can be loved for, not in spite of who we are. Even though we are living a nightmare right now  in a lot of ways, this record is about living the dream. It’s a reminder that the dream is possible.”