PERFUME GENIUS Set My Heart on Fire Immediately gets 8/10

Pop connoisseur Perfume Genius, aka Michael Hadreas, returns with his fifth album Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, released last week via Matador and Remote Control, and it’s a stunning piece, both as a whole and in its layers. Reuniting with Grammy-winning producer Blake Mills, who produced his last record No Shape (a sign of a flowering partnership), the album explores his returning ideas of perceived masculinity and queer identity, but all on a larger scale. Now he’s backed by a heavyweight crew of session musicians, including Kim Keltner, Matt Chamberlain, and Pino Palladino, who normally make their mark with rock royalty like Bruce Springsteen and Elton John. The record was also accompanied by a short essay from the acclaimed queer poet-novelist Ocean Vuong, pondering whether music is “a negotiation/disruption of time” and this is truly what the album succeeds in doing. To listen to Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is to let the world around you stop for a moment as Hadreas’ music overpowers and empowers.