Song Exploder - Perfume Genius - Slip Away

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Mike Hadreas has been making music under the name Perfume Genius since 2008. In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, No Shape, to widespread critical acclaim. In this episode, Mike breaks down the song "Slip Away." I also spoke with producer Blake Mills, who also plays on the track, and recording engineer Shawn Everett about the unusual way the song was recorded.For more, visit songexploder.net/perfume-genius

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. This week, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite episodes of Song Exploder. It's Perfume Genius telling the story of making a song slip away. This episode originally came out in May 2017, and since then, the album that this song is from went on to be nominated for a Grammy. And next week, on March 16th, Perfume Genius is going to be playing at the Song Exploder stage, at South by Southwest. I'm really, really excited

to be putting on a showcase at the festival. And in addition to Perfume Genius, the other artists that are playing that night are Kimbra, Sarah Kinsley, Fly Anakin, and Jenny Owen Youngs. They're all going to be playing live, and I'm going to talk to them a little bit about their songs.

For more information about the show, go to songexploder.net slash SXSW. That's songexploader. comnet slash SXSW. And the link is also in this episode description. Okay, here's the Perfume Genius episode. Mike Hadreus has been making music under the name perfume genius since 2008. In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, No Shape, to widespread critical

acclaim. In this episode, Mike breaks down the song, Slip Away. I also spoke with producer Blake Mills, who also plays on the track, and recording engineer Sean Everett, about the unusual way the song was recorded. It's Mike from Perfume Genius. Before I wrote, Slip Away, I was writing very different songs for about a month. I was writing really dark, wordless chanting over drones, and they were very kind of formless and creepy. The last song was more of an electronic, like, exorcism, singing in tongues. At least that was the stuff I enjoyed performing the most.

So I thought, why not I just do that for 45 minutes? And then suddenly one day I, I made a song. made this song. It was the keyboard first. I had a keyboard that sounded kind of like a guitar jam. You know, I didn't have words yet. It was just emoting. But it was much poppier, it had like a chorus. And that felt more like the direction I was supposed to go in. It felt way infinitely more exciting and even strangely more uncomfortable and challenging than all the kind of creepier stuff I was making. It wasn't purely intuitive. I like thought about the quote. and what card to go to next,

I thought about having a bridge and a chorus, and I used to think those would cancel out the spirit. If I worked too hard, I always thought the emotion would be lost. But that kind of changed for me with writing this album. And I felt like it enhanced the soul of it, all the work I was putting into mapping the actual structure and arrangement out. It's funny because the demo is called band.mpt.

Just because I, I know, no, I wrote this imagine, imagining this sort of like stadium anthem. I knew eventually I wouldn't want it to be prepared exactly like that and to have, you know, the instruments be a little more subversive than just a straight up rock cut. But I wanted the song to sound American and I wanted the language to be mine, but be weirdly universal in like a classic American pop song way. I kind of wanted that sort of Springsteenie spirit to it. Like a lot of rock dudes, they're just like, here's my big fat album.

It's amazing. And then it was like, yes, it is. We love it. They don't need to explain. Nobody's asking them questions about, like, their home life or anything. They're just like, you're a genius. We love it. There's this specific kind of confidence to it and swagger to it that it feels far from me.

So it felt kind of thrilling to steal some of it. My producer, Blake, I sent him all my demos and he sent me back pages of notes that were really thoughtful and exciting. I could just tell before we had even spoken that he understood the spirit of it. My name is Blake Mills and I produced and performed on the Perfume Genius record. The demo for Slipp Away, to me it sounded like, you know, he was writing this song from a place of guitar-based music like Bruce Springsteen. But even though the pattern felt like a guitar figure, it had a certain disjointed quality, a kind of lopsidedness to it when it's played on keys and everything's all downstrokes like that, it doesn't sound as smooth as guitar. But I liked the idea of it not just reading like a rock and roll song. And so we were trying to find an instrument to play it on that was sort of unidentifiable, that was removed from the family of guitar.

That's a lot of the reason why we worked in the studio we did is it was just filled with instruments I had never seen before or heard of from all over the place and so it felt like a magical. It was like a fantasy movie when you go to like an old bookstore and pick up an old book and you'd like accidentally go into a different world when you open it.

It was that kind of field being in there. And in that room that we were tracking in never been used on a record before it was just sitting there collecting dust turned out to be this weird guitar-shaped Bira from Molly, it's like a series of metal tines, and you strike them and they, you know, it sounds like, this particular one had a pickup in it so you could plug it into an amp. It's the bera plugged into a rolling jazz chorus. The two speakers in the amp, they're modulating the signal back and forth, both in volume and pitch.

We might the amp and stereo so that we could then send one of those speakers all the way to the left side, one of those speakers all the to the right, so it just widens that underwater chorus effect. The verse, as soon as the vocal comes in, it goes to guitar that is tuned down, and I'm tapping the string, so I'm hitting it percussively instead of strumming it. It's just sort of this percussive way of playing guitar with your fingers. That's a very like Blake Mills signature thing. I don't know how he fucking did that. There's a technique to it to get it to not have a defined attack.

pack, you know, to just be this kind of these little clouds of notes that happen in kind of like a slow strobe effect. I think he's the only one that can play in that way. You know, this song could easily have gone full-on band, rock and roll, and I wanted all of it to be prepared in a more subversive way. I think we wanted to stick a little knife in every little thing, so it was just always a little bit off. I think that that communicates the spirit a lot more.

think of something as too beautiful or too kind and gentle or sweet, it becomes background music. And I feel like if there's a little bit of dissonance, it makes everything more lasting and it even enhances the joy. It was so important for us to create a world. What that does to empower Mike and the things that he writes about and his interpretations of this world and his experiences in this world, trying to remove the sense of familiar. every so often, I just feel like it helps to keep it seeming kind of magical. This song, it's sort of joyous and free in a way that I had never written before. And it was almost confusing at first.

And it came out very easily. I couldn't tell if it was good or not because it was very foreign. I was like, can I do this? Is this me? Is this good? Are people going to want to listen to it? I think that's part of the reason why it felt scary to share and it felt, more uncomfortable than all the darker things is because it was truly how I was feeling in the moment.

Oh, I break the shape we take. Oh, baby let all them boys slip away. It's about love and like physical love and spiritual love in the face of other people telling you it's wrong or not natural. or not all right, or even in defiance and in rebellion against yourself, thinking you're not capable of it or worthy of it. And just the love being so powerful and real and true that it can't be shaken or broken by any of those things. I had been getting shit for being gay before I had kissed anyone.

I had been told repeatedly that there's something wrong with me and who I want to kiss that that makes me bad, you know. those people telling you those things eventually translate into you, you keep it with you, and you start telling it to yourself. I wasn't ashamed to myself until people started telling me I should be. But that's why I felt like it was important for me to write this song and write more songs with that essence to it. Maybe if I'm not fully there, I haven't shaken all of it.

That's what I need instead of all the things I was writing before. The last song was very angry and it was very much singing at those people, at whatever my oppressors are, you know, it was all directed at them. And these songs are more for me and for my family and my friends and the people that are already listening. I don't really care about convincing anyone else anymore or changing their minds. I just feel more interested right now in existing on my own

and with everyone else in a happier way, or at least nearer to it. It's a definitely a love song. I've been with the same guy for eight years. So him. Alan. For sure, it's a love song. It's one I wish I would have heard when I was young, you know, because I kind of, I write for Alan.

I write for me. I write for me when I was 12. I write for other 12-year-olds that need it. You know what I mean? It's my song, but I don't know. I try to carry a bunch of different people with me when I'm writing. Alan is Mike's boyfriend and collaborator and piano player in the live band. They're like an old married couple.

Alan's been around Mike. He's probably like, out of all of us, he's probably Mike's biggest fan. But he's had such an exposure to Mike that he's like, he doesn't put up with any, you know, any bullshit. So like, you know, we were all like, yes, it's amazing. And Alan's like, I don't know about, I don't know if I buy it on this line, you know. So he was like the voice of reason a lot of times and I think really pushed to get the best out of Mike. Don't hold back.

I want to break free. I just singing through your body. And I'm carried by the sound. Well, I have a lot of rules and stuff in ways that I treat my voice at home, certain EQs that I use in certain parts of my voice that I don't like so much. But when I go in the studio,

I try to kind of shake some of that off. Those are all sort of bullshit rules anyways. I kind of rely on my boyfriend for some of that, too, to keep me in check. I don't ever want to make stuff or treat my voice. I don't want to be afraid of it or try to make it sound like something it's not. I don't want to try to cover up any of the breaks in my voice. Every drum, every single beat they were born from your body, and I'm carried by the sound.

My name's Sean Everett, and I recorded and mixed the Perfume Genius record. We recorded most of the record on this binoral head. It's like a Neumann microphone. It looks exactly like a human head. Like whole torso in head. And the microphones were placed in the ears of the mannequin. And I believe it's like the consistency and weight of a human head and mathematically built so it represents the way sound moves around a human head.

I should have recorded this interview on the binarral head. Right now I'm in front of the head. Now I'm to the side of the head. Now I'm whispering behind the head. Now I'm whispering into the ear. Now I'm whispering into another ear. I had just kind of got it. And then the perfume genius thing started.

And when I was talking to Blake about it, he really wanted to create different worlds and explore different kind of sonic territory and just like imagine a spatial field of like where you are in this kind of wild place that Mike exists. And so I was like, oh, you got to bring this head. I just got this head.

And then I brought that down. And then immediately we started using it and I think I've used almost every instrument on the record. We just used it every word. To be honest, some of it was kind of off-putting because it made my vocal sound incredibly clear and very present in the mix. And in headphones, it sounds like I'm singing in the center sometimes

of your head, of the listener's head. Just so clear, which took some getting used to, but I knew it helped communicate the songs more. I'm so used to reverb or sounding a little more distant or having mystery around my voice. So that was a new thing for me to be so present. And I think that the dummy compounded that because it was almost like I was singing directly to someone.

But I eventually wanted some more choral, like beautiful parts to it, something more dreamy and ethereal. The way that Mike writes, you know, to say they'll never break the shape we take. That's such a poetic way to talk about a relationship as, you know, these two pieces that create one shape, that that is the form and that you protect one another for the sake of this thing that you both make up, that you can't have without the other. It's actually a thumbtack

piano. It's a regular piano, but if you open it up on the stoppers, they're a little thumbtacks, so when they hit the strings, has a harsher, more like harpsichord-like sound to it. The whole idea of the song is that, you know, it got so big and so beautiful that it kind of went all the way back around to breaking to the point where it kind of dissolves and that's where something kind of distant it creeps in. I think because being able to get that sort of freedom and joy is not lasting. And then you're like snapped back into reality or your version of it that's not as kind. And I think that song's a lot about kind of stealing those moments when they come up. in recognizing them as sacred, even if they only last for two and a half minutes.

When I first heard that first big break at the song where everything was turned up to 11 and everything comes on, it was a really great moment. I think both me and Alan got sort of teary-eyed. I wrote a lot of love songs about my relationship with him because so many songs that are about the beginning of love, or like young love. And I wanted to write some music that was talking about how beautiful

and sacred love can be that's been around for longer. Maybe it doesn't seem as dramatic, but it's just as powerful and worthy of dramatizing. This is so easy, the longer you're with someone, and the more your circumstances get better to take it all for granted. It's not in my nature to be grateful, unfortunately. I wish it was, but my brain is just too quick

that I'm never really fully caught up with what's happening. I'm always like 20 minutes ahead of myself, So I was trying to make myself be more in the moment and be more patient and kind and talk about some of the more magical things that are happening that maybe I don't pay close enough attention to sometimes. And now here's Slip Away by Perfume Genius in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net for links to buy this track. To learn more about Perfam Genius and to watch the Slip Away music video. And I hope to see you in Austin at the Song Exploder stage on March 16th at South by Southwest. 2022. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last

put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott. Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live.

Live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me, with editing help from Craig Ely and Casey Deal, illustrations by Carlos Lerma, and music clearance by Kathleen Smith. This episode was originally produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at SongExploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh-Hirway. Thanks for listening. I think we essentially just started there just to get the juices flowing. Sorry I just said juices flowing. I want to apologize to you and to everyone for saying that.