As Perfume Genius, Mike Hadreas boasts a Madonna-like gift for transformation. There was the boardroom diva of 2014’s Too Bright, the rococo Victorian dandy of 2018’s No Shape, and the dirt-streaked Tom of Finland homages of 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately; now, as toxic masculinity and toxic nationalism become ever more inextricable, he’s gone Hells Angel. In the music video for “It’s a Mirror,” the lead single from his forthcoming new album, Glory, Hadreas dons a leather racing jacket, drinks gasoline, and straddles a Harley. Such imagery has long been a part of the queer lexicon (biker gear is one of the main flavors of fetishwear), but as presented here—Hadreas gussied up in a bustier and heeled boots, flinging himself over the handlebars like a fae Rose DeWitt—it’s dragged firmly beyond the cultural salt circle of machismo.
As for the song itself, “It’s a Mirror” is a slice of gothic Americana that wouldn’t be out of place under the opening credits of True Blood. Working again with longtime collaborator Blake Mills, but this time with a full band in the studio, Hadreas ushers in a muscular and direct sound that feels like a decisive pendular swing back from the diffuse ambiance of 2022’s Ugly Season. Hadreas himself has never sounded sexier or more confident as a frontman, and while this isn’t Perfume Genius’ first foray into twang—see “Describe” or the Orbison-esque “Whole Life”—“It’s a Mirror” stakes its claim in a musical tradition that, though it’s always been home to outlaws, can just as often breed a festering myopia. “What do I get out of being established?” Hadreas sings, “I still run and hide when a man’s at the door.” He’s always been best at playing the bandit.
