Our last event of the Sydney Festival was a nice one to finish on. Mike Hadreas, other wise known as Perfume Genius, gave us a tender, deeply honest and heartfelt performance. Playing keyboards he sat nervously in front of us. Speaking quietly but with good humour. It feels like Perfume Genius is a work in progress. He is an immense talent, who has showed enormous growth in his short career and between album number one and number two. The future looks most bright. You could also feel his nerves seep into the crowd. He does look like he is still getting used to the idea of playing his deeply personal bedroom pop to larger audiences. But he was able to offset that with humour and personality. The overall effect was a performance of heart and beauty. Even though the vocals were a bit buried in the mix, you could still enjoy the beauty of songs like "No Tear", "17" and my favourite, the wonderful "Dark Parts". Because most of his songs are short and sweet Hadreas was basically able to nearly play every song from his first two albums. So much so that when we clamoured for an encore he threw us a Sade song, followed by a Madonna cover. All in all this was a pretty nice way to spend a late Summer afternoon. Great songs in a great setting. It was to be my first of two shows for the day. 

Set List
Awol Marine/Perry
Lookout, Lookout
Take Me Home
No Tear
17
Dark Parts
Helpless (Neil Young cover)
Floating Spit
Dreem
Learning
Rusty Chains
Sister Song
All Waters
Hood
Mr Peterson
Katie

By Your Side (Sade cover)
Oh Father (Madonna cover)