Overlooked Records of 2012: Perfume Genius

General Manager

Perfume Genius – Put Your Back N 2 It

When I named Put Your Back N 2 It my favorite album of 2012, I was often met with the response of “ugh, it’s so depressing though.” It’s true; one can easily get caught up in the record’s topics (“17” is about a gay teenager’s suicide letter, “Dark Parts” deals with Mike Hadreas’ mother’s sexual abuse at the hands of his grandfather). Yet to dismiss the record for these reasons misses its mantra. Put Your Back N 2 It is a deeply intimate album that confronts and overcomes issues with intimacy and sensuality throughout.

The title of Put Your Back N 2 It displays Perfume Genius‰’ message loud and clear. Balancing with the sexual connotations is the idea of putting all of your being into something; a theme present in most of the songs. In just two minutes, the doom-wop of “Hood” pulls no punches with the message of “you would never call me baby/if you knew me truly.” Where it would take other artists multiple minutes to create the same hard-hitting statement, Hadreas does it in half the time consistently. The compact songwriting and lyricism truly embodies Hadreas; at any point it sounds like the limited lines he delivers is all he can stand before he breaks down. However, Put Your Back N 2 It proves the frailest voice can be the strongest of all.

By Mike Creedon