First Avenue was home to a quite a pairing this week - Perfume Genius rolled through on their Glory tour this week, with shoegaze/bedroom pop band Urika’s Bedroom in tow. It was a great excuse to get out of the heat and into the musty, classic interior of First Avenue (although pretty much any show is a good reason to go there), as things are beginning to ramp up in “summeryness”.

Urika Bedroom’s opening set was an interesting mix of lo-fi and distortion, walking that juxtaposition of sounds that the genre typically finds itself walking. All things considered, I struggled with their take on shoegaze. I had seen Texan shoegazers Trauma Ray earlier this year opening for Deafheaven, and while I don’t think it’s a particularly fair comparison as UB draws significantly more from the DIY scene and a lower-energy, personal manifestation of lead singer-songerwriter Tchaud Cousins, I think their approach to the sound translated live in a way that was much more captivating. There was a sleepy, comforting quality to Cousins’ music that I appreciated a lot, however that exact sleepiness translated a bit too well, as I found it a bit of a struggle to keep my attention on the band. Cousins’ has a beautiful voice, but it’s also buried under the instrumentation, making it particularly difficult to tells songs apart.

Walking into Perfume Genius’ Wednesday night show, I was feeling a little anxious. I had just been to another concert the previous night that had really blown me away, and although I was (unreasonably) excited to finally catch Michael Hadreas’ live act for the first time and scratch another act off the bucket list, I was worried comparison would thieve me of the appropriate joy that night.

I really didn’t need to be worried about that, as it turns out - Hadreas’ performance that evening stands in the upper echelons of live acts I have seen and a clear winner for best act I have seen at First Avenue this year. The innate identity as a band of contrasts and juxtapositions, a representation of the symbolism and deeply personal music that is Perfume Genius, comes alive on stage as Hadreas twirls, squirms and twists his way across the stage. This year’s Glory, a departure for the band given its more collaborative nature and the inspiration for this tour, saw a variety of elements placed onstage for Hadreas to interact with. As he whispered and belted his way through “No Front Teeth”, a particularly outstanding moment deep into the song saw him jump from a chair at the exercise ball on stage with childlike glee. There was a sincere, earnest energy threaded into the very fabric of the performance’s concept, and it would be fairly easy to see the array of instruments and objects on stage and a clip on social media and judge it as silly or corny - but I think you really had to be there to “get it”. It felt completely silly but it made perfect sense, and might have been best exemplified by Hadreas holding a twisted pose during the crescendo of “Otherside”, the band cutting out and the audience drenched in a moment of rapturous silence.

After significantly more theatrics of this nature, Hadreas would comment that he had to limit himself from not giving too much too soon - that he often would end up on splayed on the stage and not want to get up anymore. Who could blame him? He leaves absolutely everything on stage over the course of the band’s performance, and it’s a marvel he isn’t drenched with sweat after just a few songs. I hate to over-use the word “intimacy”, but there was something special about this show - something stripped down and honest and personal in a way that lots of others aren’t. It’s one I will be thinking about for awhile.