His new album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, is the next in a long line of superb albums. Like No Shape, it retains rockist sensibilities, and the ear for radio play. Like Too Bright, it alternates violently between tenderness and alienation. Like all the great albums, it feels like it was written directly to, for, or about you – the listener.
It’s an absolute tour de force, a record full of drama and emotion and pleasure and pain. If this is Perfume Genius’ quest for sensation, then his latest is absolutely fizzing with it.
With trusted producer Blake Mills (Fiona Apple, Laura Marling), the artist born Mike Hadreas ensures that each and every note on his new album, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, lands with devastating precision. These 13 tracks are finely wrought works of art that draw as much influence from Purcell and Mozart as they do scuzzy Nineties post-punk.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is the most accessible album from Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) to date, without sacrificing any of his otherworldly strangeness and rich emotionalism.
Despite Hadreas’ growth as an artist and as a man, the fifth Perfume Genius album functions in a similar way to the second; a singular and complete photograph of a mindset and time, with a strain of sadness at its core. Hadreas may be uncompromising but stubbornness has its rewards: few albums feel as distinct or as complete as his.
In reality, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately burns with passion – desirous of musical exploration at every turn, but more crucially, driven by a craving to wrestle with issues bigger than himself.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is an enormous, cavernous record – the kind that invites you to sit inside and let your fears and triumphs echo against its glittering walls.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is attentively and intelligently constructed. At the same time, the album doesn’t feel overthought or overly intricate. It’s Hadreas’ personal, idiosyncratic take on pop music, but it’s also one that’s easy to appreciate.
Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, for its part, feels like a culmination and natural progression of all that has come before.
All the nuances of desire that Hadreas explores on Set My Heart on Fire, Immediately enhance the individuality of each song, as well as his own individuality -- and as he honors every part of his music and himself, he gives listeners another rich, densely packed album to savor.
There's only so much you can say about how Set My Heart sounds. It's excellent. I don't know how it could really be better. Sometimes melodies will crawl out of nowhere and make you think, "is this the catchiest thing Perfume Genius has ever written?"
Set My Heart On Fire Immediately may be indulgent, but it is intoxicating in its sprawling approach. It is openly expressive and emotional, as we follow Hadreas through fantastic highs and dark and dissociative lows. Yet, even when the album is at its most ethereal or chaotic Hadreas elevates these tracks and creates a captivating sense of presence.
There’s no doubt that Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is a tremendous achievement.
His effort to overcome the body-brain gulf is more apparent than ever throughout No Shape follow-up Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, on which Hadreas loses control of not just his body, but his heart. As ever, his voice and music contort and warp in tandem with his anatomy.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately may be more of a slow burn than a raging inferno, but it still glows with warmth and light, encouraging others to set their own hearts ablaze.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is an important album for Hadreas because it opens so many doors for the future – but if he really wants to set our hearts on fire, I’d advise him to once again unleash the bombast.
These are age-old ideas, but they don’t feel that way when he’s singing them. It’s par for the course for an artist who specializes in embodying pop archetypes, and making them new again.
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately covers even more aesthetic ground than No Shape did, only occasionally coming across as disjointed.
True original hits new peak on fiercely eclectic fifth.
#1 | / | Gaffa (Sweden) |
#1 | / | MondoSonoro |
#2 | / | Beats Per Minute |
#2 | / | Gigwise |
#3 | / | Esquire (UK) |
#3 | / | God Is In The TV |
#4 | / | Consequence of Sound |
#4 | / | FLOOD |
#4 | / | SPIN |
#4 | / | The Guardian |