‘How did it come down to this? Going through your call list,’ she sings on the deceptively breezy reggae bounce of ‘Hold Up’, before issuing what sounds like an ultimatum on the brilliant, Jack White-assisted rock stomper ‘Don’t Hurt Yourself’: ‘If you try this shit again / You gon’ lose your wife.’ The electro blips of ‘Sorry’ feature another killer couplet: ‘He only want me when I’m not there / He better call Becky with the good hair.’ Beyoncé stops short of singing ‘My sister Solange appeared to attack you in a lift after the Met Gala in 2014’, but this is still startling stuff which must be tough for Jay Z (who appears in the short film) to listen to. ‘Lemonade’ is officially billed as ‘a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self knowledge and healing’, but the narrative is really one of marital infi delity.
But it’s also a testament to her star quality that despite the many, many cooks in this kitchen, ‘Lemonade’ feels like an album only Beyoncé could make. It’s a testament to her star power that none of her collaborators blabbed before the surprise album release – Bey’s second in a row after her 2013 self-titled LP. ★★★★★ Beyoncé worked with so many people on ‘Lemonade’, her sixth album which she dropped in late April with an accompanying short fi lm, that its credits run to 3,105 words. Until now, we’ve only seen Hadreas’s filament flicker. Still tender, increasingly triumphant and often transcendent, ‘Too Bright’ represents a violent flowering of talent. As his voice traces sorrowful little curlicues on the title track, you can almost hear the London Sinfonia mustering for a collaboration. It’s not all change from Hadreas’s early material, but the more straightforward piano ballads here benefit from the new contrast. And the pitch-shifted mutterings of ‘I’m a Mother’ disconcert like Sparklehorse, if Sparklehorse had ever contemplated getting up the duff. ‘Grid’ is a sinister, Daughn Gibson-esque groove with tribal drums, whip smacks and a recurring eight-second scream. It’s the sonic equivalent of writing the word ‘survivor’ 50 feet high in 300-watt fairy lights.Įlsewhere ‘My Body’ stalks the same abyss as PJ Harvey’s ‘To Bring You My Love’, as Perfume Genius offers himself up to his lover ‘like a rotted peach’. The anger doesn’t come more incandescent than on ‘Queen’, an instant outsider anthem boasting the soaring gutter-glam grandeur of early Suede and the brilliant refrain ‘no family is safe when I sashay’.
With Portishead’s Adrian Utley producing, Hadreas’s tremulous voice scales new territories, heavenly and hellish, while electronics blister and seethe.
#Another one mac demarco genius full#
But it’s also full of rage at a world where 'gay panic' still exists as a legal defence for violence. It’s packed with gorgeous soul melodies, heart-squeezing ’80s chord changes and insistent rhythms. ‘Too Bright’ is both his concession and his rebellion. Next time, his label kindly advised, he might try writing something a bit poppier. A 32-year-old from Seattle, Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) made his name with two records of delicate lo-fi piano ballads about drug addiction, prostitution, sexual abuse and suicide.