Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) has always been a shapeshifter, from gauzy piano confessions to roaring art-pop catharses. On Feb. 27 he surprised fans with Glory (Extended), a digital-only deluxe edition of last year’s acclaimed album. This luxe reissue sprinkles four “new” songs into the mix, turning a beloved record into an even richer tapestry. The effect is dazzling: suddenly the shadowy romantic “Glory” grows whole again, and we get to wander deeper into Hadreas’s creative world.
Over seven albums and a decade-plus career, Hadreas has built a signature aesthetic of high camp and raw emotion. He’s gone from stabbing himself with pens on Learning’s scribbled cover to reclining in glamor on No Shape, to a muscular, greasepainted pose on Set My Heart, and now a cinematic standoff through shattered glass on Glory. Along the way he racked up universal praise – critics called Glory “lush,” “bold,” even “spectacular.” He even snagged a Grammy nod for its striking artwork. Always pushing boundaries, he’s as likely to drop a haunting piano ballad as he is to stir a bizarre nightclub anthem.
The new tracks lean into that breadth. One fan cheers that Glory “was already perfect and now it’s even better.” Indeed, “Undercurrent (Clean Heart)” reimagines the album’s single “Clean Heart” as a tender solo piano hymn – “a little hymn,” as Hadreas puts it – replacing bombast with intimacy. He says these were the “exploratory” songs from the sessions that didn’t fit the original album but were “part of [its] DNA.” The title track “Jamie,” with its airy flutes and gentle sway, already has listeners swooning as “so relaxing and beautiful.”
Now he’s taking this music on the road again. A stripped-down “duo” tour with longtime collaborator Alan Wyffels will see him revisit older gems on keyboards, flirting with new songs too. In all, Glory (Extended) feels like a behind-the-scenes visit to Perfume Genius’s universe – rich, surprising, and unabashedly personal. As Hadreas playfully noted, when he first played “Jamie” for a friend they thought it was “insane,” before realizing its real magic: pure, soothing beauty. These bonus tracks show us exactly why Perfume Genius remains one of indie pop’s most compelling visionaries.
