Perfume Genius returns with new single, announces tour and Glory

Perfume Genius is finally back with his first studio album since 2022’s Ugly Season. The Blake Mills-produced Glory, which the artist (a.k.a. Mike Hadreas) announced today, is out March 28 from Matador Records. “The album contains themes that he’s wrestled with artistically throughout his career – themes of the body and its decay, of domesticity and love, and of inescapable history and damage,” the label said in a press release. “But Glory is written from a new vantage point – on the other side of struggle, where one is left to contend with all that has happened but also has to learn to live in a still and uncharted place.” 

Those themes can be heard in the album’s first single, “It’s A Mirror,” which addresses the sort of fame-induced paranoia we’ve seen pop up in a lot of music of late. “What do I get out of being established?/I still run and hide when a man’s at the door/Polishing boots down a line in the basement/When I should be riding outside on my own,” Hadreas sings, alongside a queasy music video that seems equally inspired by Westerns and Poltergeist. 

“I wake up overwhelmed even when nothing is going on. I spend the rest of the day trying to regulate, which I prefer to do at home alone with my thoughts. But why? They are mostly bad. They also haven’t really changed for decades,” Hadreas elaborated in a statement about the song. “I wrote ‘It’s a Mirror’ while stuck in one of these isolating loops, seeing that something different and maybe even beautiful is out there but not quite knowing how to venture out. I have a lot more practice keeping the door closed.”

Perfume Genius also announced a tour to support the album, which kicks off May 12 in Healdsburg, CA. Tickets are available on perfumegenius.org. Check out the full schedule below:

5/12 Healdsburg, CA – Little Saint

5/13 San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore

5/16 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court Block Party

5/24 São Paulo, Brazil – C6 Fest