Breaking Free

perfume genius lets his doubts slip away on no shape, his most fearless work to date.

- Aly Comingore

It’s often said that a full moon carries mystic powers. Tonight, it’s conjuring all sorts of strange vibrations for the few hundred people gathered at the Capri for the closing night of Marfa Myths, an annual music and art festival hosted by indie record label Mexican Summer deep in the West Texas desert. As I navigate a crowd full of beautiful, tequila-buzzed artists, hippies, and cowboys, the Capri’s backyard starts to feel both oddly familiar and light-years away from home. Onstage, Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering is joined by Perfume Genius’s Michael Hadreas for the debut of an eerily beautiful piano ballad.

It’s Hadreas’s first time in front of a crowd since finishing his forthcoming album No Shape, but it takes the singer little time to regain his footing. The collaboration quickly twists into a tender cover of Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” before hitting its stride with a dance-fueled duet to Erasure’s “A Little Respect.” The crowd erupts in cheers and Mering cedes the spotlight to Hadreas, his boyfriend and collaborator Alan WyŒ els, and drummer Sean Lane, who together harness the night’s energy into something even more electric, soon turning the place into a party with Perfume Genius’s 2014 hit “Queen.” As Hadreas vamps across the stage, mic in hand, he sassily hangs on the line “No family is safe when I sashay,” thrusting his hips in time to the beat. Before I know it the night ends, and we all return to the windy, moonlit parking lot, quietly buzzing from the first taste of what Hadreas is calling Perfume Genius’s most “fucked-up sounding” record to date.