Album reviews: Perfume Genius, Sparks and Moses Sumney

On his fifth album, Perfume Genius turns away from ‘big US rock’ to create something altogether more intimate, pop veterans Sparks return with a record as multi-faceted as it is innovative, and Moses Sumney offers vulnerable introspection

Perfume Genius in artwork for his new album, ‘Set My Heart on Fire Immediately’ (Camille Vivier)

Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

★★★★★​

Over the years, Perfume Genius has honed a decadent and sensuous style of pop-rock. 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.

The 39-year-old referred to 2017’s Grammy-nominated No Shape as his “big American rock album”, but admitted it was more “how I wanted to be – liberated and free”. So now he reaches for intimacy on Set My Heart on Fire Immediately; many of these songs are delivered as though Hadreas is singing to his lover, in bed. From those bold US ambitions, he turns to British loners for inspiration; the phantom of Thom Yorke lingers in the eerie whines and shivers of “Moonbend”, while Elizabeth Fraser’s vocal performance and the crawl of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” stalk the wilderness in “Just a Touch”. Kate Bush, meanwhile, is draped across the lavish synths and wide-eyed wonder of “Your Body Changes Everything”.

On “Jason”, Hadreas explores the fluidity of sex and gender by lifting his voice to an airy falsetto. Against the genteel camp of a clavichord, he adopts a motherly tenderness when faced with another’s inexperience and self-loathing: “Jason there’s no rush/ I know a lot comes up/ Letting in some love/ Where there always should have been some.” There’s a silver thread woven into each of these songs; Hadreas pulls and they move like a single breathing thing, just as bodies do when they’re pressed against each other, then released. RO

Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

Sparks on the cover art for A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

★★★★☆

By rights, 2020 should have been Sparks’ year. Following their highest-charting album since 1974 – 2017’s Hippopotamus – the American art-pop duo were due to release a documentary directed by Edgar Wright, provide the soundtrack for musical film Annette, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, and set out on a UK and European tour. But coronavirus has put a pin in the lot.

Here, despite all that, is their 24th album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip. Half a century since they started releasing music, it finds the Mael brothers as inventive and shapeshifting as ever. What’s more, the quirks and droll humour (“Alexa, get me out of this place” and “Put your f***ing iPhone down and listen to me”) are matched in equal force by melody.

You could pick a highlight for your every mood from this diverse set. Opener “All That” is a wide-armed singalong anthem driven by acoustic guitar, while the electro-disco of “Left Out in the Cold” is catchier still. The wacky “Stravinsky’s Only Hit” is pure rock vaudeville, complete with rapidly shifting time signatures, vocal delivery and angular melodies. For more serious inclinations, “Pacific Standard Time” shimmers with synth and vocal-harmony melancholy, and the single “One for the Ages” is a compelling concoction of sombre keys and Russell Mael’s falsetto.

For all the surreal and light-hearted examinations of under-explored pop-song subjects such as Stravinsky and lawnmowers, there are hugely poignant moments, too, in songs like “The Existential Threat”. It is an album as multi-faceted as it is innovative. And that’s Sparks to a tee. EB

Moses Sumney – Græ​

★★★★☆​

The 2014 arrival of Moses Sumney’s soaring soul voice attracted fans from Solange Knowles to Sufjan Stevens and led to a record-label bidding war. The Ghanaian-American’s 2017 debut Aromanticism was a beautiful collection of essays on romantic attachment, and Græ picks up on this theme from its opening spoken-word passage on the subject of isolation.

Released in two parts (Part One in February), the album branches into themes of masculinity, encapsulated by the propulsive “Virile”, where a satisfying contrast of textures incorporates a growling drone, soft flute and his angelic vocals. When the album shifts into its second part, and turns inwards with a slower pace to match its vulnerable introspection, there’s no jolt: Sumney’s voice ensures that his soundscapes melt together.

It’s here that the emotional heft is to be found, particularly in “Two Dogs”, “Bless Me” and the heart-wrenching apex, “Me in 20 Years”, in which he imagines himself alone in the distant future. The song swells with an arpeggiating harp, male choral backing and delicate splashes of cymbals, until his voice is flowing so freely of rhythm that you feel him yearning, painfully, for an answer to “I wonder how I’ll sleep at night/ With a cavity by my side/ And nothing left to hold but pride.”

When pinned down, Sumney defines his music as “experimental folk-soul-jazz”, but it’s more complex than that. Under his masterful production, it sounds as though there are 20 musicians in the room with him. Flourishes of jazz flute and brass add warmth to “Two Dogs”, which showcases the acrobatics of his vocals as they glide effortlessly from falsetto vibrato to rich baritone. And the euphoric dreaminess of “Bless Me” – could there be a more heavenly gospel-cloaked crescendo on which to wrap up this astonishing feat? EB