There’s a tone present in the stark piano introduction to ‘Mr Peterson’ that hits me deep in the gut the same way that Dylan’s 1964 demo of ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ did when I first heard it some 10 years ago. Dylan wrote said track for Nico (it appeared on her 1967 album Chelsea Girl) but unfortunately never recorded a definitive version himself – just two demos; a full band version and the aforementioned singular piano version. Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m not about to declare Perfume Genius (aka one Mike Hadreas) as the new Dylan or anything – but his fragility, wiry frame and vague anonymity reminds me of a young Bobby Zimmerman at the height of his amphetamine fueled early days. Touch him and he’ll snap in half.
Who ‘Mr Peterson’ actually is, is anyones guess. Seemingly set in a high-school scenario Hadreas sings in a trembling croon (like Antony Hegarty without the operatics) “he made me a tape of Joy Division / he told me there was part of him missing / when I was 16 / he jumped off a building” – it’s a stark and tender ballad about friendship (maybe more) “he let me smoke weed in his truck / if I could convince him I loved him enough”, but it somehow doesn’t fill me with sadness but an underlying sense hope – leading us back to the context of ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’. It has the same effect (on me anyway).
mp3:> Perfume Genius: “Mr Peterson”
‘Mr Peterson’ will be released on limited 7″ via Transparent on 1st March.
Many thanks for the well-described alert to this stupendous track & artist. What a compulsive elegy, innit.