Perfume Genius
Learning
*** 1/2
Learning is a devastating little record. What it lacks in longevity it compensates for in intensity, with a lyric sheet constructed almost entirely around an unflinching look at the three A’s – abuse, addiction and alienation. Creating richly heartfelt songs seems to have provided Seattle-local Mike Hadreas with a cathartic means of purging a painful past.
The intimacy of the lyrics are alleviated somewhat by disarmingly vibrant music. Most songs in the collection are grounded in chord loops hammered out with Cat Power-style minimalism on what sounds like a battered old brown honky-tonk in someone’s aunt’s lounge room, and the lo-fi recording lends the sound a comforting warmth. Over this sturdy foundation, Hadreas sweetly warbles of the lost and broken people who “didn’t have a family to begin with” (‘Lookout, Lookout’), his waifish voice carrying the kind of aching compassion redolent of Sufjan Stevens, in ‘John Wayne Gacy, Jnr’ mode.
The apparent safety of suburbia is no protection for characters like the tortured high school teacher in ‘Mr Peterson’ or ‘Perry’, who struggles on despite “marks healing on your hands”. But amidst the pain glimmer moments of redemptive beauty, like the woman and child who go out into the backyard to watch the moon rise in ‘When,’ or the luxuriant synths of ‘Gay Angels’ and ‘No Problem’ – where Hadreas dispenses with lyrics altogether and allows himself to revel in the twisting possibilities of his voice.
Although limited by an unrelenting minor palette, imperfect recording and the wrenching content of Hadreas’ biography, Learning is an unassuming but crushing debut.
First published in The Brag, Iss. 372, July 26th 2010
Showing posts with label Sufjan Stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sufjan Stevens. Show all posts
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
The stem from the seed - Pikelet
Evelyn Morris is a busy sort. When she’s not managing Melbourne’s Hell’s Kitchen, there’s the small business of writing, recording and performing as Pikelet, her acclaimed psych-folk project. Since the release of her self-titled debut in 2007, she’s toured with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Beirut and The Ruby Suns as well as been featured at Laneway and Golden Plains. Not that any of this seems likely to go to her head any time soon.
‘So you have to go and work your job’ she explains over the wire, in a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone with their feet firmly planted. ‘And you’ve gotta go home and you might feel like bored or frustrated or lonely from your day. And rather than just sit at home we go and jam together or play shows. For me it’s just the way I live my life – music’s a huge relief for me. It’s about having some freedom from the things you have to do.’
Pikelet has undergone some serious transformations over the last few years. Although it largely remains a solo project for Morris, the addition of three regular band members has opened up the sound palette and allowed things to grow into wild and unexpected shapes. Her second album is Stem, a woozy synth-drenched headtrip, one part Virginia Woolf to two parts Lewis Carroll.
‘The name comes from the initials of all the band members’ she explains over the traffic noise that occasionally blares down the line. ‘I wanted it to be something that celebrated the fact that the boys are in the band now – it was sort of the only one that stuck. It also comes from the fact that it’s the second album’ she adds, ‘kind of like the stem from the seed.’ From small things great things can indeed grow.
While Stem has been heaped with lavish praise from practically every publication of note in the country, there seems to be a tendency to emphasise the lush sonic surface that Morris has constructed. Many have remarked on Celeste Potter’s striking cover art – hapless fluffy bunnies tumbling into a hole leading godknowswhere – while failing to note the bleak implications. And this on an album where the first track is about a bloke doing a Baltimore Quaker and setting himself alight. I take a breath and ask Morris how she responds to characterisations of Pikelet as ‘cute’.
‘That’s one of the things that’s never really stuck too well with me’ she says. ‘It’s not what I’m going for and it’s not what the undercurrent of most of the songs are. Pikelet is meant to be a bit of a surreptitious response or reaction to the way that women generally exist as musicians in Australia. Women in Australian music tend to be either singer songwriters who sing about love and relationships and emotions and stuff OR they might be the rock chick. I wanted something that’s a little more different to that. When people diminish the identity of Pikelet to just being pretty and twee my feminist hackles go up! The music’s definitely more about the darker side of people’s existence.’
Although she doesn’t ‘think about influences too much’, Morris often references sixties psychedelic folk in her music, while pointing to groups such as Broadcast (and by extension the United States of America), the Incredible String Band, Brian Eno or seventies Australian acid-folk Extradition as touchstones. She also likes Scott Walker. ‘His music is just amazing! If you listen to the surface, you just go like ‘I’m just some thirties or forties guy crooning’, but you listen to the lyrics and he’s singing about gonorrhea and being molested in the army.’ I throw out the possibility that she might like to provoke a similar reaction with Pikelet. ‘I want the whole thing can be a little more subtle than that. I want to tread a fine line between things being dark or light, have a bit of a mixture of both.’
So, what does she hope to communicate with Pikelet? ‘People often diminish pop music as being insignificant and pointless’ she muses, ‘but it’s music that’s in the collective consciousness and in the larger community at this point in time. That’s something that I’m very interested in, getting into people’s brains, and figuring out how a large group of people all think at the same time. We’re all living in the same place y’know. It’s kind of nice to imagine that there can be ways to communicate with large groups of people.’ She laughs: ‘Sorry that got really existential.’
Morris is also an enthusiastic fan of emerging acts such as Josh Armistead or Extreme Wheeze – ‘there’s so many good bands in Melbourne - for me it’s inspiring’ – and is understandably concerned by the effect recent changes to Victorian licensing laws linking live music venues with ‘high risk conditions’ have had on Melbourne’s music scene. So much so that she’s been a vocal supporter of SLAM – Save Live Australia’s Music – which delivered a petition of 22,000 signatures protesting the law to the state government the day before we spoke.
So, what’s at stake? ‘The venue that I book and work at Hell’s Kitchen can’t afford to put on gigs, as it’s too small to afford security guards’ she explains, ‘I don’t rely on these small venues for Pikelet anymore so much, but that’s not the point. What about when someone else comes along who wants to express themselves? [Small shows are] SO important for developing a cultural identity. I mean, we’ve all been there plugging away playing these ridiculous little shows, but all of those little shows matter, they all spark something. The small things are the things that we need to protect the most. It’s more about the future than it is about right now.’ Amen.
‘So you have to go and work your job’ she explains over the wire, in a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone with their feet firmly planted. ‘And you’ve gotta go home and you might feel like bored or frustrated or lonely from your day. And rather than just sit at home we go and jam together or play shows. For me it’s just the way I live my life – music’s a huge relief for me. It’s about having some freedom from the things you have to do.’
Pikelet has undergone some serious transformations over the last few years. Although it largely remains a solo project for Morris, the addition of three regular band members has opened up the sound palette and allowed things to grow into wild and unexpected shapes. Her second album is Stem, a woozy synth-drenched headtrip, one part Virginia Woolf to two parts Lewis Carroll.
‘The name comes from the initials of all the band members’ she explains over the traffic noise that occasionally blares down the line. ‘I wanted it to be something that celebrated the fact that the boys are in the band now – it was sort of the only one that stuck. It also comes from the fact that it’s the second album’ she adds, ‘kind of like the stem from the seed.’ From small things great things can indeed grow.
While Stem has been heaped with lavish praise from practically every publication of note in the country, there seems to be a tendency to emphasise the lush sonic surface that Morris has constructed. Many have remarked on Celeste Potter’s striking cover art – hapless fluffy bunnies tumbling into a hole leading godknowswhere – while failing to note the bleak implications. And this on an album where the first track is about a bloke doing a Baltimore Quaker and setting himself alight. I take a breath and ask Morris how she responds to characterisations of Pikelet as ‘cute’.
‘That’s one of the things that’s never really stuck too well with me’ she says. ‘It’s not what I’m going for and it’s not what the undercurrent of most of the songs are. Pikelet is meant to be a bit of a surreptitious response or reaction to the way that women generally exist as musicians in Australia. Women in Australian music tend to be either singer songwriters who sing about love and relationships and emotions and stuff OR they might be the rock chick. I wanted something that’s a little more different to that. When people diminish the identity of Pikelet to just being pretty and twee my feminist hackles go up! The music’s definitely more about the darker side of people’s existence.’
Although she doesn’t ‘think about influences too much’, Morris often references sixties psychedelic folk in her music, while pointing to groups such as Broadcast (and by extension the United States of America), the Incredible String Band, Brian Eno or seventies Australian acid-folk Extradition as touchstones. She also likes Scott Walker. ‘His music is just amazing! If you listen to the surface, you just go like ‘I’m just some thirties or forties guy crooning’, but you listen to the lyrics and he’s singing about gonorrhea and being molested in the army.’ I throw out the possibility that she might like to provoke a similar reaction with Pikelet. ‘I want the whole thing can be a little more subtle than that. I want to tread a fine line between things being dark or light, have a bit of a mixture of both.’
So, what does she hope to communicate with Pikelet? ‘People often diminish pop music as being insignificant and pointless’ she muses, ‘but it’s music that’s in the collective consciousness and in the larger community at this point in time. That’s something that I’m very interested in, getting into people’s brains, and figuring out how a large group of people all think at the same time. We’re all living in the same place y’know. It’s kind of nice to imagine that there can be ways to communicate with large groups of people.’ She laughs: ‘Sorry that got really existential.’
Morris is also an enthusiastic fan of emerging acts such as Josh Armistead or Extreme Wheeze – ‘there’s so many good bands in Melbourne - for me it’s inspiring’ – and is understandably concerned by the effect recent changes to Victorian licensing laws linking live music venues with ‘high risk conditions’ have had on Melbourne’s music scene. So much so that she’s been a vocal supporter of SLAM – Save Live Australia’s Music – which delivered a petition of 22,000 signatures protesting the law to the state government the day before we spoke.
So, what’s at stake? ‘The venue that I book and work at Hell’s Kitchen can’t afford to put on gigs, as it’s too small to afford security guards’ she explains, ‘I don’t rely on these small venues for Pikelet anymore so much, but that’s not the point. What about when someone else comes along who wants to express themselves? [Small shows are] SO important for developing a cultural identity. I mean, we’ve all been there plugging away playing these ridiculous little shows, but all of those little shows matter, they all spark something. The small things are the things that we need to protect the most. It’s more about the future than it is about right now.’ Amen.
First published in The Brag, April 2010
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