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May 15, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Perfume Genius

Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) has released a new album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, today via Matador. Now that the album’s out you can stream the whole thing below. Also, today we posted our review of the album and you can read that here.

Previously Hadreas shared the album’s first single, “Describe,” via a self-directed video for the track. “Describe” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then he shared another song from it, “On the Floor,” via a self-directed video for the song. “On the Floor” was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is Perfume Genius’ fifth studio album, the follow-up to 2017’s No Shape (also on Matador). Although last year Hadreas did the music for the immersive dance project The Sun Still Burns Here.

Set My Heart On Fire Immediately finds Hadreas re-teaming with producer Blake Mills. It was recorded in Los Angeles, where Hadreas currently lives with longtime partner and musical collaborator Alan Wyffels. The album also features musicians Jim Keltner, Pino Palladino, Matt Chamberlin, and Rob Moose.

According to a previous press release, on Set My Heart On Fire Immediately Hadreas “plays with themes of love, sex, memory and the body, channeling popular music mythologies while irreverently authoring its own.”

Hadreas explained further in the press release: “I wanted to feel more open, more free and spiritually wild, and I’m in a place now where those feelings are very close – but it can border on being unhinged. I wrote these songs as a way to be more patient, more considered – to pull at all these chaotic threads hovering around me and weave them in to something warm, thoughtful and comforting.”

For The Sun Still Burns Here Hadreas collaborated with Seattle-based choreographer Kate Wallich and her dance company The YC. Hadreas said that working with them also inspired Set My Heart On Fire Immediately.

“I had been working with them for a year and a half,” he explained. “With lots of rehearsals, lots of performances, lots of relationships and energies, and I was feeling connected to my body. I was feeling connected to all their bodies. And having boundaries be blurred and having rules be gone and having all this play within nonsense and absurdity – in tandem with a real connection and truly valuable work.”

Read our 2017 interview with Perfume Genius on No Shape.

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