Perfume Genius – Live at the Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, 9th May 2012
 I’ve heard bands complain about Glasgow crowds in the past. In much the same way Glasgow bands tend to find Edinburgh audiences eerily quiet, a lot of Edinburgh bands can find gig-goers in Glasgow inattentive, particularly when the music in question is quiet.
Well, if you want quiet, brittle music, you won’t find much that is more so than Josh T. Pearson or Perfume Genius. I have seen both in Glasgow in the last year and with both performers the audiences have been absolutely, completely and utterly silent, absolutely in thrall to the fragile music being played for them.
It can be a difficult thing, I assume, playing intense songs with quite difficult, personal subject matter to an audience of strangers. One of my friends at the Perfume Genius gig at the Captain’s Rest said that she kind of wished he had played alone, instead of with a couple of extra players to add some minimal backing. I can see what she means, but that would of course mean stripping away what little remains of the cushion between performer and audience, and whilst I can imagine that would make for a captivating show, I am not sure I could really ask any musician to open themselves up that much that regularly for the purposes of my entertainment.
As it is, you can tell Mike Hadreas is not at his most comfortable on stage. His performance is absolutely excellent, but his one attempt to chat with the crowd showed that it wasn’t something that came all that naturally. It might have been a feeble attempt at chat, strictly speaking, but it was honest and without artifice, so however meagre, it still helped us connect with Hadreas as a performer a little better.
That was a relief, because given he was sitting down to play the piano at a venue with a very low stage, it was actually quite difficult to get much feel for him as a person. Unless you were right up the front you really couldn’t see him at all, so the night felt just a little bit like a bunch of people standing in a crowded room to listen to the same record.
A little paradoxically, one of the other strange things to contend with was the very existence of performers playing the music. Given how ethereal and elusive the Perfume Genius albums are, it seemed almost shocking to see three normal guys there in front of us playing, as if it were entirely unremarkable for them to be doing so. And the Captain’s Rest seemed like an odd place for this all to be happening. I can imagine the band playing an intimate house gig or in some stunning old edifice in Edinburgh for example, but a run of the mill, workaday gig venue in Glasgow just seemed a little incongruous. Too normal, somehow.
And having said all that, you’d think I wasn’t that into the gig wouldn’t you, but that’s really not the case. I really noticed these odd little things, but in general it was a cracking show. The band may have numbered only three but they fleshed out the songs beautifully, and their restraint was a pleasure to witness; never trampling over songs which need air to breathe and silence to break.
I can easily imagine this being difficult music to translate to a live setting actually, but in this case it was gorgeous. Perhaps less icy and mysterious than on record, but that was replaced by a warmth which I will confess I hadn’t quite seen there before.
Perfume Genius – Lookout, Lookout
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