Perfume Genius: "Grid"
With his forthcoming LP, Too Bright, Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius is on a determined crusade against his demons. First, there was the gay-panic-stricken public that he flouted on lead single “Queen”. And now there is “Grid”, another sneeringly dynamic track looking to banish the songwriter’s innermost struggles head-on. “A lot of these songs are me trying to claim some power in situations that would typically depress or alienate or victimize me,” Hadreas said of the album. “No matter how good I feel there is a darkness hanging, which I don’t agree with—giving it a voice is an attempt at freeing it so it can potentially dissipate.”
That darkness has given way to one of Perfume Genius’ most starkly energetic songs to date. With his voice distorted into a shrieking, unearthly descendant of Suicide’s Alan Vega, “Grid” finds Hadreas applying heavy bass, stuttering synths, garbled back-up cheers, and a lone drum for a rousing, repetitive core. Then, like “Queen” before it, a hard-nosed stomp finds its way to the forefront, flipping Hadreas’ voice from low and smirking to unsettlingly menacing. At one point in the maniacal Charlotte Rutherford-directed video for the song, filled with silver-bodysuited dancers writhing and pulling at him, the screen flashes to Hadreas’ face, grinning at the camera with a mouthful of blood. An off-screen punch to the teeth, with all of its savagery and release, seems a prime mental image for “Grid”s mechanical tumult.
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