And Pluck Your Strings

Sometimes, you just need to listen to a sad song. And the new album from Perfume Genius, AKA Seattle-based musician Mike Hadreas, is full of them. It’s an album that deals with trauma, heartache, desperation, suicide, and a whole range of other fun stuff, and it reaches a climax with the sublime song ’Dark Parts’, written about the abuse Hadreas’ mother suffered at the hands of her grandfather. It’s a delicate, fragile song, based simply around Hadreas’ voice and piano, but it is devastatingly effective.