Sometimes you stumble upon music so simple it sounds primordial. It's always been a (beautiful) mystery to me, how that happens, but with Perfume Genius' Learning, there's no mistaking it: piano melodies bare and insistent enough to sound clunky, if it weren't for the haloed ring of struck chords filling the spaces, and for faint, wavering synthesizers holding everything together in a precarious haze of atmosphere; a soft, boyish voice — it reminded me of Sufjan Stevens' own angelic falsetto, in the slowest, saddest of his songs — buried under immemorial crackles; here and there, a sprinkle of discreet electronics. Not much else, and yet Learning, in under half an hour, carries more emotional power than any other album I've listened to this year.
In this sparse universe, the lyrics are often vague, but they haunt. "No one will answer your prayers, until you take off that dress; no one will hear all your crying, until you take your last breath. But you will learn to mind me, and you will learn to survive me.": cryptic first words that leave you wondering who exactly is being addressed, what it exactly means. Apart from "Mr. Peterson," the album's single and most explicit piece of writing (romance with a depressed and suicidal math teacher), the rest of the songs bask in the same sort of indeterminacy, calling, at various times, to different but equally remote characters (Mary, Perry, "you," "we," "him" and "her"). Regardless, in their slow, whispered march, these songs and their words carry emotions so self-evident they become utterly devastating. Sorrow and desolation hang heavy, suffocating, like the aftermath of a sad dream in a pitch-black bedroom.
But then so does empathy. Burdened by themes of loss, isolation, suicide, abuse, illness, each song still shimmers with the promise of an extended hand, of a warm lap into which to lay your head, of sweet-smelling fingers wiping the tears from your cheeks, of a reassuring presence stroking your hair as you watch the snow fall outside your window. Again, nothing is explicit: much remains ambiguous and fragile ("Mr. Peterson, I know you were ready to go. I hope there's room for you up above, or down below."), and no answers are given (except perhaps in the album's last and most frankly religious song). But Learning touches the soul and offers a bed, a blanket, a quiet and and intimate space to the heavy and weary heart.
It's extremely rare that an album makes me cry. It's even rarer that an album makes me cry every single time I listen to it. But Learning still does.
And I've been listening to it since mid-July.
Seattle's Perfume Genius
No comments:
Post a Comment