Wednesday, Mar 9, 2022 • 22min
Re-issue: Perfume Genius - Slip Away
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This week, I want to revisit one of my favorite episodes of Song Exploder, with Perfume Genius telling the story of making Slip Away. This episode originally came out in May 2017. The album the song’s from, No Shape, went on to be nominated for a Grammy, and was named one of the year’s best in lots of places. And next week, on March 16, Perfume Genius will be playing at the Song Exploder Stage at SXSW. I’m really excited to be putting on a showcase at the festival, and the other artists playing will be Kimbra, Sarah Kinsley, Fly Anakin, and Jenny Owen Youngs. For more information about the show: songexploder.net/sxsw
http://songexploder.net/sxsw
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Mike Hadreas has been making music under the name Perfume Genius since 2008. In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, No Shape to widespread critical acclaim. In this episode, Mike breaks down the song Slip Away. I also spoke with producer Blake Mills, who also plays on the track, and recording engineer Shawn Everett about the unusual way the song was recorded.
For more, visit songexploder.net/perfume-genius http://songexploder.net/perfume-genius
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Perfume Genius
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Hrishikesh Hirway
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Transcript
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Hrishikesh Hirway
00:00
You're listening to
Song Exploder
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made, my name is Hrishikesh Hirway
.Share
Break
Hrishikesh Hirway
02:35
Okay, here's the
Perfume Genius
episode.Share
02:38
Michael Hadreas
has been making music under the name, Perfume Genius
since 2000 and eight. In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, "No Shape" to widespread critical acclaim. In this episode, Mike
breaks down the song "Slip Away". I also spoke with producer Blake Mills
who also plays on the track and recording engineer Shawn Everette about the unusual way the song was recorded.Share
Perfume Genius
03:02
Every jump, every single beat, they were born from your body, and I'm carried by the sound. It's
Mike
from Perfume Genius.
Before I wrote Slip Away, I was writing very different songs for about a month, I was writing really dark, wordless chanting over drones, and they were very kind of formless and creepy. The last album was more of an electronic, like exorcism singing in tongues, at least that was the stuff I enjoyed performing the most, so I thought, why don't I just do that for 45 minutes?Share
03:43
And then suddenly one day I made this song, it was the keyboard, first, I had a keyboard that sounded kind of like a guitar jam, you know.
Share
04:05
You know, I didn't have words yet, it was just emoting, but it was much poppier had like a chorus. And that felt more like the direction I was supposed to go in. It was, it felt way infinitely more exciting and even strangely more uncomfortable and challenging than all the kind of creepier stuff I was making. It wasn't purely intuitive, I like thought about the chords, what card to go to next. I thought about having a bridge and a chorus, and I used to think that those would cancel out the spirit.
Share
04:52
If I worked too hard, I always thought the emotion would be lost, but that kind of changed for me with writing this album and I felt like it, it enhanced the soul of it, all the work I was putting into mapping the actual structure and arrangement out.
Share
05:11
It's funny because the demo is called "Band. Mp3" just because I am, I don't know, I, I wrote this imagining this sort of like stadium anthem. I knew eventually I wouldn't want it to be prepared exactly like that and to have, you know, the instruments be a little more subversive than just a straight-up rock cut.
Share
05:35
But I wanted the song to sound American and I wanted the language to be mine, but be weirdly universal in like a classic American pop song way. I kind of wanted that sort of Springsteenye spirit to it. Like a lot of like rock dudes, they're just like, "here's my Big Fat album, it's amazing". And then it was like, "yes, it is, we love it". They don't need to explain, nobody's asking them questions about, like, their home life or anything, they're just like, "you're a genius, we love it".
Share
06:05
There's a specific kind of confidence to it and swagger to it, that it feels far from me, so it felt kind of thrilling to steal some of it.
Share
06:15
My producer
Blake
, I sent him all my demos, and he sent me back pages of notes that were really thoughtful and exciting, I could just tell before we had even spoken that he understood the spirit of it.Share
Blake Mills
06:28
My name is
Blake Mills
and I produced and performed on the Perfume Genius
record the demo for "Slip Away", to me, it sounded like, you know, he was writing this song from a place of guitar based music like Bruce Springsteen
, but even though the pattern felt like a guitar figure, it had a certain disjointed quality, a kind of lopsidedness to it when it's when it's played on keys and everything is all down strokes like that.Share
06:57
It doesn't sound as smooth as guitar, but I liked the idea of it not just reading like a rock and roll song, and so we were trying to find an instrument to play it on that was sort of unidentifiable, that was removed from the family of guitars.
Share
Perfume Genius
07:15
That's a lot of the reason why we worked in the studio, we did, is it was just filled with instruments I had never seen before or heard of from all over the place, and so it felt like a magical, it was like, like a fantasy movie when you go to like an old bookstore and pick up an old book, you'd like accidentally go into a different world when you open it. It was that kind of field being in there.
Share
Blake Mills
07:35
In that room that we were tracking in, never been used on a record before. It was just sitting there collecting dust, turned out to be this weird guitar shaped
m'bira
from Mali
, it's like a series of metal tines, and you strike them and they, you know, it sounds like. This particular one had a pickup in it, so you could plug it into an amp.Share
07:57
It's the
m'bira
plugged into a Roland jazz chorus, the two speakers and the amp, they're modulating the signal back and forth, both in volume and pitch, we might the amps and stereos so that we could then send one of those speakers all the way to the left side and one of those speakers all the way to the right, so it just widens that underwater chorus effect.Share
08:21
The verse as soon as the vocal comes in, it goes to guitar that is tuned down, and I'm tapping the string, so I'm hitting it percussively instead of strumming it, it's just sort of this percussive way of playing guitar with your fingers.
Share
Perfume Genius
08:48
That's a very like
Blake Mills
signature thing. I don't know how he fucking did that.Share
Blake Mills
08:52
There's a technique to it to get it to not have a defined attack, you know, to just be this kind of these little clouds of notes that happened and kind of like a slow strobe effect.
Share
Perfume Genius
09:05
I think he's the only one that can play in that way.
Share
09:13
You know, this song could easily have gone full on band rock and roll, and I wanted all of it to be prepared in a more subversive way, I think we wanted to stick a little knife in every little thing, so it was just always a little bit off, I think that that communicates the spirit a lot more.
Share
09:30
I think if something is too beautiful or too kind and gentle or sweet it becomes background music and I feel like if there's a little bit of dissonance, it makes everything more lasting, and it even enhances the joy.
Share
Blake Mills
09:43
It was so important for us to create a world, what that does to empower
Mike
and the things that he writes about and his interpretations of this world and his experiences in this world, trying to remove the sense of familiarity every so often. I just feel like it helps to keep it seeming kind of magical.Share
Perfume Genius
10:11
This song, it's sort of joyous and free in a way that I had never written before, and it was almost confusing at first, and it came out very easily. I couldn't tell if it was good or not because it was very foreign.
Share
10:25
I was like can I do this? Is this me? Is this good? Are people going to want to listen to it? I think that's part of the reason why it felt scary to share and felt more uncomfortable than all the darker things is because it was truly how I was feeling in the moment. Oh, ooh love, they'll never break the shape we take, oh, ooh, baby let all them voices slip away.
Share
10:58
It's about love and like physical love and spiritual love in the face of other people telling you it's wrong or not natural or not all right, or you know, even in defiance and rebellion against yourself, thinking you're not capable of it or worthy of it, and just the love being so powerful and real and true that it can't be shaken or broken by any of those things.
Share
11:26
I had been getting shipped for being gay before I had kissed anyone, I had been told repeatedly that there's something wrong with me and that's who I want to kiss. That that makes me bad, you know. Those people telling you those things eventually translate into you, you keep it with you, and you start telling it to yourself. I didn't, I wasn't ashamed of myself until people started telling me I should be.
Share
11:53
But that's why I felt like it was important for me to write this song and write more songs with that essence to it, you know, maybe if I'm not fully there haven't shaken all of it and that's what I need instead of all the things I was writing before, because the last album was very angry, and it was very much singing at those people at whatever my oppressors are.
Share
12:13
You know, it was all directed at them and these songs are more for me and for my family and my friends and the people that are already listening, I don't really care about convincing anyone else anymore or changing their minds, I just feel more interested right now in existing on my own and with everyone else in a happier way, or at least nearer to it.
Share
12:38
It's definitely a love song. I have been with the same guy for eight years, so yeah, Alan, for sure it's a love song. It's one I wish I would have heard when I was young, you know, because I kind of I write for Alan, I write for me, I write for me when I was 12, I write for other 12-year-olds that need, you know what I mean? It's my song, but I don't know, I try to carry a bunch of different people with me when I'm writing.
Share
Blake Mills
13:10
Alan is Mike's boyfriend and collaborator and piano player in the live band they are like, an old married couple, you know, Alan's been around Mike, he's probably like, out of all of us, he's probably Mikes biggest fan, but he's had such an exposure to
Mike
that he's like, he doesn't put up with any, you know, any bullshit.Share
13:31
So, like, you know, we were all like, "yes, it's amazing", and Alan's like, "I don't know about, I don't know if I buy it on this line", you know, and so, so, he was like, the voice of reason a lot of times, and I think really pushed to get the best out of
Mike.
Share
Perfume Genius
13:46
Don't hold back, I want to break free, cause it's singing through your body, and I'm carried by the sound. I have a lot of rules and stuff and in ways that I treat my voice at home certain EQs that I use in certain parts of my voice, I don't like so much, but when I go in the studio I try to kind of shake some of that off, those are all sort of bullshit rules anyways, I kind of rely on my boyfriend for some of that to keep me in check.
Share
14:14
I don't ever want to make stuff or treat my voice, I don't want to be afraid of it or try to make it sound like something it's not, you know, I don't want to try to cover up any of the brakes in my voice. Every jump, every single beat, they were born from your body, and I'm carried by the sound.
Share
Shawn Everett
14:32
My name is
Shawn Everett
and I recorded and mixed the Perfume Genius
record. We recorded most of the record on this binaural head, it's like a new woman microphone, it looks exactly like a human head.Share
Perfume Genius
14:45
Like whole torso and head. And the microphones were placed in the ears of the mannequin.
Share
Shawn Everett
14:51
And I believe it's like the consistency and weight of a human head and mathematically built, so it represents the way sound moves around a human head. I should have recorded this interview on the binaural head.
Share
Perfume Genius
15:07
Right now I'm in front of the head, now I'm to the side of the head, now I'm whispering behind the head, now I'm whispering into the ear, now I'm whispering into another ear.
Share
Shawn Everett
15:21
I just kind of got it, and then the
Perfume Genius
things started and when I was talking to Blake
about it, you know, he really wanted to create different worlds and explore different kind of sonic territory and just like imagine a spacial field of like where you are in this kind of wild place that Mike
exists.Share
15:38
And so I was like, oh we gotta bring this head, I just got this head, and then I brought that down and then immediately we started using it and thinking used in almost every instrument on the record, we just used it everywhere.
Share
Perfume Genius
15:50
To be honest, some of it was kind of off-putting because it made my vocal sound incredibly clear and very present in the mix and in headphones, it sounds like I'm singing in the center sometimes of your head of like the listener's head just so clear, which is, took some getting used to, but I knew it helped communicate the songs more.
Share
16:11
I'm so used to reverb or sounding a little more distant or having mystery around my voice, so that was a new thing for me to be so present, and I think that the dummy compounded that because it was almost like I was singing directly to someone, but I eventually wanted some more coral, like beautiful parts to it. Something more dreamy and ethereal. Oh, ooh, no love, they'll never break the shape we take, oh, ooh, love, love, they'll never break the shape we take, oh, ooh, baby let all them voices slip away
Share
Blake Mills
16:59
The way that
Mike
writes, you know to say they'll never break the shape we take, that such a poetic way to talk about a relationship, as you know, these two pieces that create one shape that is the form and that you protect one another for the sake of this thing that you both make up that you can't have without the other.Share
Perfume Genius
17:21
It's actually a thumb tack piano. It's a regular piano, but if you open it up on the stoppers, their little thumbtacks, so when they hit the strings has a harsher, more like harpsichord like sound to it.
Share
17:46
The whole idea of the song is that, you know, it got so big and so beautiful that it kind of went all the way back around to breaking to the point where it kind of dissolves and that's where something kind of distant creeps in. I think because being able to get that sort of freedom and joy is not lasting, and then you're like snapped back into reality or your version of it that's not as kind. And I think that songs a lot about kind of stealing those moments when they come up and recognizing them as sacred even if they only last for 2.5 minutes.
Share
18:21
When I first heard that first big break at the song where everything is turned up to level and everything comes on, it was a really great moment. I think both me and Alan got sort of teary eyed. Oh, ooh, baby let all them voices slip away.
Share
18:50
I wrote a lot of love songs about my relationship with him because so many songs that are about the beginning of love or like young love and I wanted to write some music that was talking about how beautiful and sacred love can be that's been around for longer that maybe doesn't seem as dramatic, but it's just as powerful and worthy of dramatizing.
Share
19:13
This is so easy, the longer you're with someone and the more your circumstances get better, to take it all for granted. It's not in my nature to be grateful, unfortunately I wish it was, but my brain is just too quick that I'm never really fully caught up with what's happening. I'm always like 20 minutes ahead of myself, so I was trying to make myself be more in the moment, be more patient and kind and talk about some of the more magical things that are happening that maybe I don't pay close enough attention to sometimes.
Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
19:58
And now here's "Slip Away" by
Perfume Genius
in its entirety.Share
22:47
Visit songexploder. net for links to buy this track to learn more about
Perfume Genius
and to watch the slip away music video, and I hope to see you in Austin
at the Song Exploder Stage on March 16th at SXSW 2022.Share
Break
Hrishikesh Hirway
24:06
Song Exploder is made by me with editing help from Craig Ely and Casey Deal, illustrations by Carlos Lerma and music clearance by Kathleen Smith. This episode was originally produced by me along with Christian Koons. Song Exploder is a proud member of
Radiotopia
from PRX, a network of independent listener supported artist owned podcasts.Share
24:28
You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia. fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @HrishikeshHirway and you can follow the show @songexploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at song exploder. net/shirt. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.
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Perfume Genius
24:50
I think we essentially just started there just to get the juices flowing, sorry, I just said juices flowing. I want to apologize to you and to everyone for saying that. Radiotopia from PRX.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
Perfume Genius
Blake Mills
Shawn Everett