Domestic Disturbances: Perfume Genius on Bad Omens, Faded glory, and the Trouble with Getting Out of Bed.
Photography by Cody Critcheloe
This interview was originally published in July 2025 for WUSSY Vol. 14 — order a copy!
Over the course of seven albums, Mike Hadreas has used his mordant humor, painterly lyricism, and radical vulnerability to make baroque art rock that wrestles (in the classic, homoerotic sense) with the opposing gravitational pulls of the public and private spheres. Since emerging as Perfume Genius in 2008, Hadreas, alongside his band and life partner, the classically-trained multiinstrumentalist Alan Wyffels, has crafted a body of work defined by prismatic psychodramas and devastating confessionals, frequently delivered with a wry smile, in an attempt to map the vertiginous heights and fathomless depths of his own queer interiority. In spite of this gaze within, Hadreas is often thrillingly preoccupied with his simultaneous fear of (and perverse fascination with) the dysfunctional mechanics of the outside world. His songs lament the inherent risks of exposure, the fragility of the male ego, and the all-too-familiar tragicomedy of never quite feeling ready to greet the day–an impulse only bolstered by the acute cabin fever and amplified agoraphobia he experienced during the COVID-19 lockdown, when much of his latest album, Glory, was written.
Produced by Blake Mills, and sporting earthy, full-bodied arrangements of what I refer to as “uncanny prairie” roots music, Glory contends with aging, settling down, the difficulty of maintaining relationships, and the sundry quiet terrors of domesticity. The prolific visuals created around the album by Cody Critcheloe–AKA multidisciplinary artist SSION–envision a liminal homefront in a nameless small town, where Hadreas inhabits elaborate tableaux of suburban rot that pay homage to photographers such as Gregory Crewdson, but are further complicated by renegade kitchen appliances, cursed tchotchkes, and the unspeakable ravages of cottagecore.
In SSION and Hadreas’s reimagining of Disturbia, the looming threat of home invasion is just one of many perils our protagonist must navigate, including but not limited to: carbon monoxide leaks, splintered floorboards, or an elevated sensitivity to household chemicals, hearkening back to the antiseptic paranoia of Todd Hayne’s Safe (1995). Throughout Glory, Hadreas coaxes sonic poetry from deeply relatable quotidian anxieties, reminding us to always check behind the proverbial shower curtain, especially when the calls are coming from inside the house.
A couple weeks before Glory was released in late March 2025, I sat down with Hadreas to talk bad omens, faded glory, and the trouble with getting out of bed.
Photography by Cody Critcheloe
Perfume Genius: Oh, I think I'm late. Sorry.
Kerosene Jones: No, it's okay. We were just telling your publicist that we operate on a system of "Gay Delay" at WUSSY. So all is well. How are you?
PG: I'm good. I woke up. I overslept. I’ve been jet lagged for a week and a half, and so I was waking very, very early, but now I'm slowly reverting back to my normal bad schedule.
KJ: I'm a nocturnal entity, and I just started a new job that requires me to sometimes commute at six in the morning, so I relate deeply to this.
PG: Intellectually you could want to do that. But then your body is like “Let's have a couple nightmares tonight,” and then you start sweating really hard and sleep through your alarm. So that's something I did last night.
KJ: Now I'm thinking of “No Front Teeth” and the motif of teeth falling out in nightmares, and I'm wondering if that's something that ever happens for you?
PG: I'm sure I've had one of those. But my nightmare last night was not very existential. I had a dream that I was in the bed that I was in, on the side that I was in, and a huge dog came into the room and was right in my face, growling at me all sinister. And I woke up, and made a noise, like a sleep noise in real life (imitates jolting awake). The second nightmare was the same. It was a man watching me, a sinister man. I don't remember the setup of that one either. I just remember that it was a man, which makes sense.
“I feel like this album is a lot more of just sharing how these fears are, instead of imagining the solution to them, or fucking them up and making them so faggy and crazy that it becomes a new version of the fear.”
KJ: That also speaks to the lyrics of this new album, and the imagery surrounding it, in a pretty tangible way. One of my first questions for you is: I feel like your work is often exploring or straddling this line between public and private spheres and inner and outer spaces, and that feels very present in the new album and the visuals accompanying it. I was wondering if you could talk about that?
PG: I think I've always used the music as a framework to think about things that I've been avoiding. Trying to make a space where I could have feelings that were confusing or I hadn't figured out. Even old feelings, like going through old memories and trying to reframe them or soothe some version of myself, in an attempt to have that be helpful or interesting to other people. The more personal it is, weirdly, the more it reaches people.
But I kind of only do that for the music, and I think it’s become really clear to me the older I get, is that I'm reserving all of the willingness to do that for writing and performing. I shake off all of my self-consciousness…well, not all of it, but more than usual, and I'm charging people money to watch me sing, and I feel okay with that, for some reason.
But I don't have that same brazen feeling in my everyday life, and I'm unwilling to do a lot of the counterintuitive things that would make you feel better, like exercising when you're sad, or putting yourself out there socially when you're feeling anxious, because that's the only way things will change, is if you do something different. I'm like “Well, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay at home, I'm not going to exercise.” And my phone is dead, and it stays dead for like, three days and...that's not really working anymore, honestly. It worked for a long time and it felt like my job, that after a tour, I went home and I isolated and I would just go into a spiral in my head to try to find out what's the new thing that I'm going to make a record about, but then there was the lockdown, and there was a lot of time in between the records, between the writing portion of it and touring. So I didn't have that outlet. And I realized I can't live with that sort of dynamic anymore.
Photography by Cody Critcheloe
KJ: It feels like there's a lot of focus on ideas of the domestic, or reframing the domestic, from what I've seen in your collaborations with Cody for this record, and in the lyrical content. There’s a reflection on the different stages of your life and how it relates to notions of privacy, but with the domestic as an overarching framework.
PG: Well, I think a lot of the personal things that I was obsessing over were not personal. They're kind of universal, like dying–like, I'm not the only one that it's gonna happen to, and Alan and my Mom, they're going to die, but so is everybody else. And I think I feel that now more than I used to, the older I get, and everything feels-
(A dog hops into view)
Here's my dog. Isn't she cute?
KJ: What's her name?
PG: Petunia.
KJ: Hey, Petunia.
PG: But these things are really scary to me, in a way that I've been attempting to beat for a long time. I'm trying to fix it. You know what I mean? I feel like this album is a lot more of just sharing how these fears are, instead of imagining the solution to them, or fucking them up and making them so faggy and crazy that it becomes a new version of the fear.
KJ: I think I feel the same with getting older, contending honestly with my relationship to my family, or attempting to tend to my gardens socially and romantically. Especially in “No Front Teeth,” in the lyrics and the accompanying imagery, it feels almost like a renegotiation of the traditional family, and I'm not sure if the idea of polyamory is being thrown into the mix, or other nontraditional relationalities that constitute a queer family. I was wondering if you could speak on that gesture?
PG: Yeah, and the process felt like that. We all stayed in an Airbnb, everyone that worked on that video. There's like 16 people in there, and a lot of us are older and not doing tons of Adderall anymore, so we're all just hanging out.
And the reason I worked with Cody, beyond him just being brilliant and me fully trusting his taste and his ability, is that he has a curiosity and a lack of bitterness. Both of us get really excited by things, and we laugh really hard at things, and I want to be around people like Cody more in my life, and I want the work I do to feel like that, and my life to feel like that. I want it to be more full of joy. I think what's lucky about not having a map for the second half of my life is that you get to make your own map up. But to do that you have to really pay attention, and you have to notice where the goodness is and move towards it, because you don't really have a rubric. You have to make your own rubric, and in order to make your own you have to actually write it down and organize it and be very intentional about it. And I think that's been hard for me. I kind of just power through and don't think about anything, and don't really move with intention, as far as organizing my life. Which is fine. I don't know if that answered the question at all.
KJ: Yeah, I think it speaks to this kind of friction between how much we are able to curate our own experiences, or create these inner and outer worlds, and the difficulty in figuring out how much they can intersect. It also brings me to the title of the album. “Glory” is such a multifaceted concept, and for me, it has a particular kind of American connotation, as well as finding glory in the mundane or the quotidian or the banal. I’m wondering if that was on your mind? Also your work, this album in particular...I have a certain imagination of what the Pacific Northwest is like. I've never been. But my imagination of the Pacific Northwest lines up with how this album sounds.
PG: That's interesting. I mean, I lived there for most of my life, and it still feels like a serial killer country, like Twin Peaks-y, spooky. It just feels like permanent dusk there.
But I was born in the Midwest, and if there is a place, especially in all the visuals for Glory, that feels resonant to me, it's weirdly the Midwest. And we did shoot all the art and the videos in Kansas City. But I also wanted it not to signify anything. We wanted a house that had an energy and a charisma to it, but didn't want to signify a time period or a class level or a clear specific place in the world.
KJ: So folks can attach their own meaning to it?
PG: Yes, but also because that feels really satisfying to me when it's sort of off and on at the same time. Same with the styling. I wanted it to be over the top and absurd, but also deeply felt and earnest. And my hair, it's fake now, but I was born with red hair, and my mom has red hair, and I like how it's artificial, but then I also have a real connection to it, too. Holding both truths feels very satisfying to me right now, but it also, at the same time, feels like pure chaos. I can reckon with death or whatever, but it still fucking sucks, and it could happen at any moment. I can try to go and be more engaged.
The other day, I was on the couch, and I was playing video games, and I was feeling very cozy, and everything seemed really good. And then we had an earthquake, and I thought "I'm gonna die. We're dying." I grabbed my dog. I was like, "Well, here we go." So it's just like, how do you do your life? When it's hard to hold all those things at the same time, but it's also a relief to just say that you can't.
Photography by Cody Critcheloe
KJ: Or conversely, you're sharing that load or that weight with other people who know how to carry it for you in different ways.
PG: I want to do that, but that's very hard. It requires you to be very vulnerable and share with them what you need help with to be carried, and that's very embarrassing to me for some reason. But I feel like that with Cody and with Alan and with my producer Blake and my band. They all really know me and I really know them, and sometimes you have to explicitly say what those things are, but when you know someone, you just kind of know what they need too. It's weird that you can be with somebody for 16 years and still have things that you're scared to share with them, or that feel extra tender. You'd think you would run out, but you don't.
KJ: It's also a matter of getting so close to someone that you start to develop blind spots, or you're so used to how you are perceived in their eyes that things fly under the radar or get buried.
PG: It can make you not have a new experience of yourself or a new experience of them anymore, because you're just sort of living the story you have in your head about yourself and about them, you know?
KJ: I read that a lot of this album was originally conceptualized during the COVID lockdown. Is that true?
PG: I mean, COVID for me lasted a lot longer than it did for other people. I was very bowled over by it. I did not deal with it very well. It was a dark time for me and I still don't know if I'm on the other side of it, or if other people are feeling the same way, and are just better at hiding it. I have met some people that loved it, and it seems like that they're really telling the truth.
KJ: What were you listening to during that time, and what sonically informed this new record?
PG: I was listening to a lot of Arthur Russell, especially the kind of folkier, country leaning...I mean, it's not fully country, but I love that there's an outsider quality to him. There's an unhinged, exploratory, completely unbitter way about his writing, but it also feels very connected. It's not out in the clouds. There's some real sweetness and grace. There's a humility to all of it. And Townes Van Zandt too. Townes has a way of writing that is very resigned and plain spoken about huge things.
KJ: I would venture to say they're both very lonesome writers too. Their sense of solitude is palpable in a lot of their work, respectively.
PG: Yeah. I don't know why that made me sad. I didn't really think about it like that, and honestly that's how I had been feeling for a while, and a lot of that is, I'm sure, my own doing. Somebody else would be able to tell me better why I feel so lonely when there's a lot of opportunity not to be.
KJ: I think sometimes for me that makes it worse, when you're surrounded by people, especially living in a city, it's one of the most isolating places, because things can be so transactional or ephemeral. It's harder to hone in on tangible connections.
PG: Also what happens is I'm very bad at responding to emails because, well, I need to have lunch. I need to feel very confident and feel like a good version of myself before I respond. But I never feel like that. So I just never respond. My life has felt more like that lately. I'm like "I'll go out and re-engage with the world after I figure all this stuff out, after I come full circle and process these feelings so that I can really show up for the world." And then I just never really feel like that. Then you get into this real guilt and shame spiral, but who cares? Me talking to myself is, "I understand this is hard for you, but like, girl, get it together."
KJ: I'm someone who has spent hours late at night ruminating on how I shook someone's hand wrong. So I get you on the fear of showing up for the world. One of the most fun parts of the “It’s a Mirror” music video is you getting momentarily terrorized by a bunch of motorcycle dykes. I see a lot of Gregg Araki's influence in Cody's work in general, but I'm wondering if that's a particular like entry point for you?
Photography by Cody Critcheloe
PG: Big time. All of the original references that I sent to Cody were film. I sent Cody the scene in The Piano Teacher (2001), when Isabelle Huppert smells the cumrag in the porn theater, where one time you'll watch that, and you'll be disturbed, and then one time you'll watch it and you'll laugh. It is so over the top. And I love when things exist in both of those modes. Especially the “No Front Teeth” video, I love how it's absurd. I guess it's campy, but me and Cody talk about campiness a lot, we know that’s part of it, but I don't think we think of it that way. We think it's really beautiful.
KJ: There's this duality that makes things more illegible, or harder to emotionally comprehend, that really enriches the experience. When Isabelle is smelling the cumrags, you could respond to that from a very erotic positionality, or see its inherent camp appeal, or be completely disturbed. Or all three.
PG: That's very satisfying to me. It feels like an exorcism, because it feels like the inside being reflected outside, with all of its ingredients. There's this scene in a movie called Humanité (1999), where this guy, I think he's the chief of police, but his friend has just confessed to killing a young girl, and he's weeping and hysterical. The police chief is interrogating him, and the guy confesses, sobbing, and the police chief starts to kind of comfort him, and then they start to make out. And when I first saw that, it was just so full of competing information and feeling that I laughed, but I cried. There's something very satisfying about it.
“I'm very bad at responding to emails because, well, I need to have lunch.”
KJ: I think what makes it so effective is that their inner life isn't legible, or the reasons behind that choice are completely obscured. And that's what makes it so rich, in regards to inner and outer worlds. The deliberate lack of translation.
My favorite sequence of tracks on the album is the one-two punch of “Full On” followed by “Capezio.” It's really beautiful. And I love those ornate fluttering flutes combined with what I read as a football narrative that is happening in “Full On.” Thinking again about the idea of glory in the mundane, in that song in particular.
PG: You know when a very traditionally masculine man gets a cold? And he is just like, on the ground, and he can't do it, he can't function.
KJ: He's all tuckered out.
PG: And he literally just has a cold, but he's hysterical. And there's part of me intellectually that finds that repulsive, that he's unable to do any kind of internal work or reflection to go through the world despite his cold. But then there's part of me that feels very empowered by it, like, "Let me help you. I can take care of you. I know how to do it." Also, there's a kind of masculinity that I'm attracted to that I don't really understand, because I don't get anything from it. It's not a meeting in the middle. It's not a collaboration. It's more just me witnessing it and comforting it or getting off on validation from it. It's more archetypal. I'm not really looking at them as their own full person. I'm dealing with the archetype, which is a partial reflection of their truth, but I'm also dramatizing it. I'm making a film, a movie scene out of this interaction.
Like my song "Jason." Jason and Capezio, they're different people, and they're both real people, but they represent that dynamic to me. And they're both people that were in and out of my life, very withheld, and literally didn't talk and were steely, but then would sometimes portion out vulnerability. This sort of back and forth of power, or sweetness, but it was never really collaborative. It wasn't like meeting in the middle and talking and processing things, which is fun. I mean, that can be really fun and it can be therapeutic in a way, but also I'm old now, and I'm sick of wondering why I like things, or why I do things–like, “Just do it. Who cares?”
I think that's why I was so obsessed when I was younger with fetish videos, because I loved how pure they are. People know exactly what they want and that feels so beautiful and liberating to me. And I don't really feel like that. I have a lot of shame, I guess. the things I want have shifted and changed, and the way that I think about my sexuality, my gender, all this stuff, it weirdly has become more expansive. It just feels fun to dramatize it and to turn it into the movie scene that I always dreamt that it was.
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Interview by: Kerosene Jones (@kerosenejones_)
Photography by: Cody Critcheloe (@ssion_official)
