In each of his promo shots, Mike Hadreas looks beat up, his bruises bare for all to see. On his debut record, the home-recorded heartbreaker Learning, he reveals the true extent of his pain over 10 simple, haunting and haunted piano songs. Hadreas, in his mid-twenties and running from bad memories of New York and drug and alcohol addiction, returned to his mother’s house in Everett, Washington to get clean a couple of years ago.  

Leading a reclusive existence, he finally found solace and direction in his music, played into a microphone headset and computer.
“I’d been clean and sober for a good deal at that point. I spent a lot of time hiding in my house,” says Hadreas. “I wasn’t drinking but I wasn’t doing very much else. Basically, not drinking was the only thing I was doing! And I kinda got sick of it. Things started to bubble up and I didn’t have the thing that made them go back down again.”
The desire to make music had always been with him but, shy and self-conscious, he had never sung before.
“I really wanted to but when you’re such a big listener with so many reference points you end up censoring yourself. I don’t care about that anymore. Thank God, too, because I would have ended up falling through.”  
The music of Perfume Genius is one man’s mission to find catharsis. Never meant for a wider audience, how has the attention it has since received sat with its creator?
“That wasn’t my original intention, it just happened. I guess when you’re not trying to have a message and it’s not heavy-handed, it’s easier for people to relate. You don’t want to beat them over the head. Not that my music is super subtle!”  
The raw emotion of Learning – with its lyrics of suicide, homosexuality and Joy Division mixtapes – makes it difficult just to listen to. What is it like talking about it?
“You learn how to talk about it.  I find it easier to word things if I’m doing something creative. It’s been hard to not freeze up when I’m asked questions about it.”  
Hadreas has likened his voice to that of an ‘elf tranny’, but in truth it is a high, tentative yet engaging thing, both on record and in conversation. His first live show was in March. Stepping on stage was a daunting prospect, especially without the safety net of substances.
“Oh man, big time!” admits Hadreas. “I always imagined that I might do it if I was completely wasted. I got sober in the middle of all of this so it was a double whammy for me. I don’t think I’d ever shown up in my life, period, and then I had to really show up with these incredibly personal things. If I drank I guarantee that none of those shows would ever have happened.”
In a world of what-ifs, where would he be today without the music?
“Music was a big component of me actually trying to live my life. I felt like I finally had a purpose, that I wasn’t aimless. A lot of the healthy choices I’m making, they’re not because I care about myself but because I care about what I’m doing. I would hope that if that was taken away I would still be okay.”
He laughs.
“Every little thing I’m saying right now sounds really new age-y! Like I’m Julia Roberts or something! It’s a lot more simple and not as dramatic as that but it’s really important to me.” 
Selfish question to ask, but, will his gain be the listener’s loss? Now that he’s in a more positive place, having purged some old ghosts, has the bottle of beautiful misery run dry?
“New stuff always pops up. I don’t think there’s a shortage of stuff! Maybe it’ll be less about what happened and more about the healing afterwards. I think that’s important too. Some people might be bored of that - growing up - but I don’t really care, that’s what’s going on.” 

Learning by Perfume Genius is out now on Matador Records.