GIRLS – My Ma Video
Directed by @focuscreeps
Perfume Genius – Pitchfork + 1
New album ‘Put Your Back N 2 It’ out now, purchase here.
On i Tunes HERE
Pitchfork – 8.4 Best New Music
”Put Your Back N 2 It” Album Stream
Click the image above or HERE to listen to ‘Put Your Back N 2 It” in all its glory.
Order your CD or VINYL (with free download) copy HERE or on I TUNES HERE.
The following is something about each song on the album, in Hadreas’s (aka Perfume Genius) own words:
AWOL MARINE: This is from some unedited homemade basement porn I watched, with an old man and some hustlers. You can see or hear them doing drugs off camera. They leave the camera running before and about ten minutes after the “scenes”, and I am sort of obsessed with watching the before and after. One guy told the cameraman he was just doing the video to get money for his wife’s medicine. Then there is a close up of his face. The old man always explains that he will edit out the guys’ faces but he never does. That is the specifics of where it started, but I was also trying to show the desperation, demoralization and soullessness that comes with addiction, and what you’re willing to do to get what you need.
NORMAL SONG: I wrote this for my friends and family that feel like damaged goods after some of their experiences. Even if you didn’t have a hand in what happened to you, somehow when you get older the lingering ickiness can feel like your fault. But that’s poison, not true. Heather is not a big nasty secret, my mom is not a big nasty secret, Heather is not the first 25 years of her life, I am not 16 hours at the Sheraton. I just wanted to write a straight up, normal song about it.
NO TEAR: My circumstances have gotten a lot better and sometimes I’m scared that if they go away, I won’t be able to carry on being healthy. There have been three times where I felt like if the music thing tanks, if I end up alone – everything will still be OK. So i wanted to write a song to remind me and also to remind Heather’s crazy ass that she doesn’t need a man to do right by herself.
17: Almost every gay man I have met has body image issues. They are all tripping! I think it is an easy place for your brain to dump everything. A lot of times you have no idea why you feel so shitty, so you can pick at your face. I named it 17 because of teenagers, who are always tripping and killing themselves. It is basically a gay suicide letter, so…sorry about that. But I was not always interested in listening to anything triumphant when I was a teenager, or even that it gets better. I think that is really valuable but sometimes I wanted to hear that someone felt exactly as grim and bleak as I did, and have it written out for me. That is important too, and not an invitation.
TAKE ME HOME: I wanted to write a pop song about hookerism, so if it was in a commercial or something I could say that song is about hookerism. It’s about that old feeling where you are out of money and options and just combing the streets for anybody that will take you wherever and you will do and be whatever they want and completely annihilate yourself as long as they keep feeding you drugs and you never have to move. Also I was just trying to write about in relationships when you are willing to give up everything and erase yourself for the other person, because you are so scared of being alone.
DIRGE is an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem from 1921.
DARK PARTS: This song is about my mom. I was worried about showing her, but she cried through the whole thing. I wanted to take something from her life that wasn’t happy, and turn it in to something triumphant, to remind her how strong and beautiful and loved and important she is. She doesn’t like the last line and says that her dark parts belong to her alone.
ALL WATERS: Why are straight women always walking with their hands in the back pocket of their boyfriends’ jeans? Would I do that all the time too if I didn’t have to think about it? Alan and I hold hands in specific parts of the city and sometimes outside of those parts. But there is always a little ‘catch’; no matter how much I think the shame and fear is gone, there is always a little something in the back of my mind. I am almost embarrassed sometimes when we are holding hands, and that fucking infuriates me. I can’t even imagine that hesitation ever going away, and that makes me very sad.
HOOD: This is about when you feel like if someone really knew you, they would leave. Very revolutionary.
PUT YOUR BACK N 2 IT: I wrote this for Alan before we got together. It’s about how if you show me everything and I really, truly know you, I will never leave. I wanted to write a gay love song with two men singing together. It is also about gay sex. There is not a lot of grace or tenderness in early homo sex sometimes; I wanted to teach Alan that we can still do the right thing and it will be really warm and cool. I wrote it and had Alan sing it with me before he knew it was about him.
FLOATING SPIT: This song is about overdosing and going to the other side, about a few times where I thought I was close to doing that. Who knows if I was or not, but I certainly felt like it. I was also thinking about if the Neverending Story took place in a bathhouse, what that would look or sound like, and what would the creatures would look like? Probably a lot of floating spit.
SISTER SONG: I was imagining someone leaving all the things in someone’s room the same after that person had died, or that they were going to rehab and their family and friends would hold down the fort while they were gone.
Cate Le Bon – UK Headline Tour in April
Album CYRK released 30th April 2012 on Ovni (Turnstile) PRE ORDER HERE
“Le Bon’s days as a farmgirl in West Wales may be long behind her, but she’s clearly held on to certain agricultural principles: namely, that the right amounts of patience and nurturing can produce glorious yields.” Pitchfork
With her second album CYRK (the Polish word for Circus) hitting a record store near you on 30 April, singer-songwriter-with-a-difference Cate Le Bon will be heading out on a short UK tour to celebrate, including a special Circus themed album launch party in London at the Village Underground on 23 April.
LIVE DATES AS FOLLOWS
23 April – London, Village Underground (Album launch party)
24 April – Manchester, Soup Kitchen
25 April – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s (Communion night)
26 April – Sheffield, Harley
28 April – Cardiff, The Printhaus (Album launch party)
Girls – New London/European headline shows
Girls announce their return to the UK and Europe with a string of dates. Kicking off in the UK with their biggest headline show to date at Forum in London on Monday May 28th, they’ll also play three shows in France and at Primavera Festival in Spain.
On sale 07/02/12! -
MAY
28 – London, Forum
29 – Lille, Le Grand Mix
30 – Paris, Cite De La Musique Festival
31 – Marseille, Cabaret Aletoire
JUNE
1 – Primavera Festival, Barcelona
This marks the first set of UK/ EU dates since a sold-out tour for their eponymous second full length album ‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost’- released on Fantasytrashcan / Turnstile in September last year. This critically acclaimed record was soon followed up with a limited 7” release of ‘Lawrence’- a tribute from Girls frontman and songwriter Christopher Owens to Felt, Denim and Go Kart Mozart frontman and songwriter, Lawrence.
Order ‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost’ HERE.
“One of the best rock records in years” – Pitchfork 9.3
“Masterpiece” NME 8/10
“Spellbinding” BBC Music “Stunning” The Guardian
“A terrific album” MOJO ****
Perfume Genius – UK and European headline tour, May 2012
“4 stars – epic…Hadreas has mastered the art of melancholy” – Q
“4 stars – tear stained and unsettled…deeply compelling” – The Fly
“Sparse, sparkling music…crystalline” – Uncut
With the release of his second album “Put Your Back N 2 It” just around the corner, Seattle native Perfume Genius is now announcing a string of rare live dates across the UK and Europe in May.
07 May 2012 The Lantern Theatre Sheffield
08 May 2012 Captains Rest Glasgow
09 May 2012 Deaf Institute Manchester
10 May 2012 St Pancras Old Church London
12 May 2012 Uterian Church Brighton
13 May 2012 Chapel Arts Bath
14 May 2012 St Pancras Old Church London
16 May 2012 Botanique Bruxells, Belgium
17 May 2012 Amstelkerk Amsterdam, Netherlands
19 May 2012 Paradijskerk Rotterdam, Netherlands
20 May 2012 Gebaude 9 Cologne, Germany
21 May 2012 Prinzebar Hamburg, Germany
22 May 2012 PrivatClub Berlin, Germany
24 May 2012 Divan Du Monde, Paris, France
Stream and download ‘Hood’ below
Cate Le Bon – CYRK , New album released 30th April 2012 on Ovni (Turnstile)
“Le Bon’s days as a farmgirl in West Wales may be long behind her, but she’s clearly held on to certain agricultural principles: namely, that the right amounts of patience and nurturing can produce glorious yields.” Pitchfork
Turnstile are excited to announce the release date for Cate Le Bons album, CYRK on OVNI (Turnstile), April 30, 2012.
“How would I describe the album?” muses Cate Le Bon. “Cut a remote island in two and place one half to your ear…”
“CYRK is like a time travel travelogue which continually returns the sea,” says Le Bon, who took the album’s title from the Polish word for Circus and took inspiration from a trip to the Isle Of Eigg. “I mostly write about the sea, matters of the heart and animals – or a mish-mash of all three.”
Recorded with producer Krissie Jenkins in Cardiff and set for release on Gruff Rhys’s Ovni imprint, CYRK found Le Bon raiding Super Furry Animals’s collection of synths, pedals and guitars. “We spent days plugging different things into one another – it was so much fun,” she says.
Players include Le Bon’s “trusty” backing band (Andy Fung on drums, Steve Black on bass and Niwl’s Sion Glyn on guitar) plus H. Hawkline on synths and Meilyr and Gwion from Racehorses playing brass on Great. “If you listen very carefully,” says Le Bon, “you can hear Gruff Rhys wailing backing vocals on Falcon Eyed too.”
The completed album is a 35-minute blast of colour, ever-changing as it whizzes from the garage pop opener Falcon Eyed to piano-led Puts Me To Work and the psychedelic title track. Elsewhere, the delights of Fold The Cloth, The Man I Wanted (“The only time that I have put a recorder track down and not been ridiculed for it. Result.”), the proggy Through The Mill and closing number Ploughing Out, a track so epic it demanded to be split into two parts. “The song ends with a cacophony of instruments, a mixture of everything that has appeared on the album,” says Le Bon. “It’s the finale. I make my saxophone debut; it will also be the last time I ever play saxophone. I very nearly ruptured my cheeks.”
Watch the video for ‘Fold The Cloth’ here -
