Today, Perfume Genius (who killed it at our SXSW FLOODfest showcase last week) announced Ugly Season, the follow-up to 2020's Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, which will arrive June 17 via Matador. Mike Hadreas, the mastermind behind Perfume Genius, also teamed up with visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite for a short film alongside the 10-track project.
"This project is the genesis of a whole new direction that I’m taking, one that I’ve been thinking about within this endemic culture, since 2020,” Satterwhite explained. “Mike and I are both writing scripts. My visual narrative serendipitously mirrors the lyrical direction in his music; it’s a rare, like-minded bond. It’s a creation myth. How do you architecturally mold and render an idealized version of utopia? It’s about making something that you desire so beyond your scope that it’s hard to grapple into a concrete form.”
Hadreas, who recently started his North American tour, wrote the music for Ugly Season to accompany choreographer Kate Wallich’s dance piece The Sun Still Burns Here that was performed at residencies in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City, and Boston in 2019 (the singles "Pop Song" and "Eye in the Wall" weren't exactly one-offs, it turns out). Soon we'll get to hear the larger work they were conceptualized for.
Revisit the tracks below, and pre-order Ugly Season here.
