Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, is slowly but surely becoming something of a ‘small pop’ icon, furrowing a confident path into the realm of alternative singer-songwriter. By tackling subject matters of bottomless darkness – murder, suicide, depression; twisted gender, taboo sexuality and self-loathing – he inverts and actively attacks the sometimes hammy tropes of piano-led balladeering. His unflinchingly direct style places immense weight on the typically restrained tracks, and have resulted in widespread acclaim for 2010’s Learning and 2012’s Put Ur Back In 2 It.

New album Too Bright – perhaps the most broadly acclaimed yet – sees Hadreas shift away from weaving tales of other people’s emotional and physical battering, and instead dote on his own bruising experiences along the way. He has expanded his sonic template, introducing a latticework of faintly buzzing electronics into the mix, and begun to tackle subject matters of homosexuality and shame even more head-on.

He is an auteur who deserves celebration; a natural candidate for our new In Stereo series. We spoke with Mike after recording in the converted London chapel about the new record and challenge of projecting his message on increasingly larger stages – and through different online mediums too.

GABRIEL SZATAN: On the day of filming, I was interested by you stamping your feet with anguish while pushing your voice to quite a sharp, forthright place; especially on the material off Too Bright. Talk us through the process of retaining that catharsis you initially felt while songwriting. How do you go about bottling it up and keeping that going night after night?

MIKE HADREAS: Well, the music’s very different: I’m not just behind a piano on my own. When I watch people perform I’m looking for that one moment where they look like they’ve forgotten where they are, just really locked into whatever zone they were when they wrote it. It’s very dramatic to witness whatever spiritual thing they’re channeling. So I guess I try and get into the same kind of fervour and wildness, especially with the new music as you say. The only downside to that is that I really have no idea what it looks like; when I watch videos back there are times where I think I must’ve looked completely insane. I have this weird mix of anxiety, but then sort of ego at the same time and it’s a really weird combination — then I’ll look on YouTube and I’m either not moving at all or I’m doing something that’s just not… cute!

There’s some worry. I haven’t played a lot of these things before and I don’t wanna overthink it. I only have communicated with my voice before, so now I feel like I have to be thoughtful about how I look because I want the intention to come across. Looking slightly mental’s totally fine with me, I think I’m more worried about the opposite: where I think I’m communicating but it just looks like I’m kinda like sitting down. I don’t mind looking unstable and mentally ill so long as I get the intention across.

You mentioned that instead of just you and a piano, you have a new band with you. The guitar screes on “Queen”, for example, bring your music closer to straight-up rock ‘n’ roll in feel, which is a pretty big leap from the downtrodden vignettes you were coming out with originally.  Were you writing the new material with the intention to play it live, or as the songs started coming together did you realise the need for a full band dynamic?

I wrote songs specifically for the album, as opposed to writing songs and then curating them into an album afterwards. I thought a lot more about the music and the sounds on it than before – there’s generally much more thinking about it now overall. I was a lot more focussed on the lyrics and the message behind things. I thought for a long time that I needed the words to be at least 80% of what the intention was. I guess it was [laboured over], but also more fun for me and more powerful in some ways for the music to be deliberate.

Is it difficult to revisit the same place you were in with the earlier music, which were less personal, and more generally character studies. Is it difficult to convey the same Mike who was writing songs like “Look Out, Look Out” in 2009, when you’re performing them five years down the line?

Not really. I’m still very proud of my old songs. I still remember and understand where I’m coming from – I’m still sorta as messed up as I used to be so this is not too much to get there. I can sing them more confidently now though. I’m singing them for other people, too. I used to perform them quite shyly and try and pretend other people weren’t listening. So that’s changed.

A constant is that your records are always very brief. Is that a deliberate attempt to land an emotional sucker-punch by keeping the songs compact for maximum impact?

There’s a few different things that go into it. A lot of the time it’s where a song naturally ends to me – I won’t even think it’s much longer than it is. Then when I get the tracklist of all the songs and I’m trying to make the order for the album I realise that a song I thought was a full three minutes is only 1:30 or something. I get sort of paranoid about repeating myself and moreover I don’t feel the need to. Not that that’s bad, but sometimes in songs I feel like people repeat elements over and over again without real purpose. I like how mine stop when I’m done saying what I need to. When I was growing up I always read a lot of short stories and collections and things. I always thought that short stories could be perfect, whereas a long book can’t. And I like that.

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Don’t miss Perfume Genius’ In Stereo, broadcast from 1500 (BST) on Wed 1st October. More info HERE.