Mike Hadreas (on the right), telling it like it was

The solid 15 seconds of painful, awkward silence between when Mike Hadreas (a/k/a Perfume Genius) sits down and when he actually starts playing piano is your first warning that this is gonna be a nerve-rattling experience, Cat Power to the nth degree. His frail falsetto -- like Sufjan drained of all grandiosity, or Shudder to Think's Craig Wedren drained of the sleaze and frivolity -- shakes you further. And then, finally and most brutally, the lyrics. That he rhymes "brother" with "recovers" is the least of your problems.