FEATURE 141 - Perfume Genius ~ No Shape

No Shape is Perfume Genius's fourth album, and its a defiant confirmation of his talent, giving fuller flesh to his idiosynchratic imagination. Visually there's always been something about him that's of the 1920's, slight of build, fey and winsome, but with a harder queenly eye that says don't mess with me. His voice has little basso profundo, though he utilises and enhances his voice's qualities well. So vocally, though slight, breathy and light in tone, on No Shape he gives it the most exotic, sensuous and dramatic of musical settings to frame it with. There is probably no pop artist working at the moment who ponders on his place in queerdom and the world at large, as this man.

The album's opener Slipaway which starts with an aboriginal tribal electro beat, that then explodes out into this dramaticly wide panorama, is an exhilerating flourish. 'don't look back, I want to break free, if you never see what's coming, there's no reason to hide'  he sings. Capturing the feeling of how falling in love can take you by suprise when it arrives. There has always a mode of transgressiveness surrounding Perfume Genius and his music. He wants to break out of limitations, personal, social and musical conventions of all kinds. We all may feel from time to time, that.our views of ourselves are self-limiting and witholding of our potential. Which is probably why its taken four albums for Perfume Genius to reach this level of achievement, it has been hard won.



There are many musical peaks on No Shape but Die 4 You is a truly beautiful thing. One that is hard to quite put into words. Exploiting PG's hushed vocal qualities, its a sinuous and heartfelt peaon to attraction and longing for a loved one. The video is a wonderful accompanyment to this song, like a surreal dream, full of wishfulfillment and a nebulous physical sense of the love object. Its artfully contrived, but somehow evoking the loneliness in longing, of waiting, the perilous febrile qualities of desire, how muscular intimacy and emotionally tenderness are fed by the precognition of our imaginations



In many ways just picking out a handful of tracks from an album that has such a cohesive feel and theme woven through it, leaves an incorrect impression of it. However, you have to attempt from giving snapshots to paint what the complete picture maybe like. With Wreath, there's a life giving urgency to it that propells it forward. As he sings 'I see the sun go down I see the sun come up, I'm moving just beyond the frame' it could seem like that urgency is to do with making the most of life, because who knows where the end of it is, just beyond the frame of it? 'I want to hover with no shape'. would indicate another reading, of the need to keep dying to yourself, to not stay the same out of habit, but to constantly shift shape, to keep breaking through to another way of being, 'to put a wreath upon the grave'. The video is joyous, an edited selection of  videos from people around the world miming or dancing in their own individual way to this track, it has a universality to it, encapsulating audi-visually what the words life affirming is meant to discribe.