Hello and welcome to So the Jerker on songwriting.

This is Brian, here with Simon, and joining us on the show today as an American singer, songwriter and musician,

with one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary indie pop.

He's come a long way since he first turned heads back in 2010,

with the stark intimacy of his long-playing debut, Learning, recorded in his mum's basement.

As this episode reaches you, he's just dropped his seventh studio effort, Glory, produced by frequent

collaborator Blake Mills. We're delighted to welcome the excellent Mike Hadrius, aka Perfume Genius,

to the show. Mike was born in 1981 in Des Moines, Iowa, and grew up in Everett, Washington. A pop music

loving kid, he took piano lessons from the ages of 7 to 15, although he considers himself

mostly self-taught, and as a teenager, listened obsessively to the likes of Elliot Smith, PJ Harvey,

Bjork, and Liz Fair. After high school, he went on enrol at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts,

but abandoned his studies to move across the country to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he lived

for a few years while working as a club dormant in the East Village. Mike returned to Everett in 2005,

where he moved into his mum's house and decided to give songwriting a go. In 2008, inspired by the

film, Perfume, The Story of a Murderer, he adopted the Nom De Pl film Perfume, the story of a murderer, he adopted the nom de plume

perfume genius and began uploading his material to Myspace. Following the 2009 release of his first

single, Mr Peterson, via Welsh indie label Turnstile, he signed to Matador, where he remains to this day.

While playing his first ever live shows in support of learning,

he was accompanied by a classically trained pianist Alan Weifels,

who has to become his partner in life as well as music.

2012's Put You Back Into It was recorded mostly in the UK with producer Drew Morgan,

while Mike teamed up with Portus Heads Adrian Utley for 2014's Too Bright.

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