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On the eve of his seventh album Glory, Perfume Genius is preoccupied. He’s fixated on the things anyone with a wandering, creative and often self-destructive mind fixate on: his image, his body and the pervasive fear that the people he loves will die. That’s not to say Glory is melancholic and ruminative. Rather, it’s an elastic, open-hearted record that’s refreshingly more intent on flirting with life’s hardest questions than answering them.

Perfume Genius, the stage name of Michael Hadreas, has never balked away from discomfort, but on Glory he’s waved the white flag to thought. In an era where we’re all bogged down by a relentless news cycle, environmental calamities, and bouts of solipsism, it feels impossible to think our way out of despair. In the album’s first track, “It’s a Mirror,” Hadreas muses, “Can I get off without reliving history/ And let every echo just sing to itself?” It’s a cheeky acknowledgement that we can’t necessarily control what courses through our brains, but we can let noise just be noise.

“A lot of the songs are kind of like exposure therapy. It’s at least attempting to feel more as opposed to just thinking,” Hadreas tells PAPER. “It’s trying to actually go towards a realized version instead of conceptual.” Hadreas, who worked on the album with producer Blake Mills (who has produced every Perfume Genius album since No Shape) and creative partner and husband Alan Wyffels, does exactly that. Glory sees the artist at his most settled amidst the chaos.

Perfume Genius sat down with PAPER to talk about creative reinvention, the epic music video for the single “No Front Teeth” featuring Aldous Harding and his love for The Beast, the epic sci-fi movie from French provocateur Bertrand Bonello.

Why, with this whole album, did you make the decision to go blondish?

It’s a multi-part thing. Part of it was like — I was at home and I knew how extroverted I was going to have to be to do all this stuff around the record. I needed to get in some mindset where I’m out. And dyeing my hair was immediately a step towards that. It’s fake. I like that it was a performance of my hair. My mom is a redhead, and I was born with red hair so it felt personal too. I liked that juxtaposition, I guess. But the spray tan, I don’t have it now, but I just did an interview where I talked about all the [album] covers. It’s hard to articulate. I guess it’s like talking about the music. Maybe if I went to therapy with somebody for seven hours they could help me unpack why I did all of the things I did. I have no idea. I just think I needed to have a spray for the record. And then Cody [Critcheloe] was like, “Yeah, and it should be really, really intense and we should show the tan line.” And it just ramps up from there. But as far as a really meaningful reason, maybe I’ll know in a year, or maybe there isn’t one.

That’s also leading into something I wanted to talk about in general with this album. Knowing that you’re going to have to be public-facing in this way, is it easier to be a character each cycle of this? Is the performance aspect of it a shield against public scrutiny or attention?

It definitely feels like that. But what’s strange about it is, you know — my instinct is to not leave the house. I get anxious and am like, being at a party sounds horrible. But then when I go to a party I’m like, this is fun! I don’t want to leave. I get really into it. And performing and all this stuff is the same. I dread it. I get really in my head. I’m like oh god, how am I going to do that all again? Then I start doing it and am like, I’m kind of into this. We got the pictures back, and I was like, oh my god, these are incredible. I’m like let’s fucking go. But each side never fully leaves. It’s not like I fully click into each one. They exist in varying degrees all the time. And weirdly you end up feeling more like yourself inside all this dressing up.

People talk, especially in terms of pop music, about the necessity of reinvention. And there’s the framing of reinvention. I think people can be cynical about it and talk about it like it’s some sort of attention-grabbing ploy. If you don’t constantly change your sound or your look people will get bored of you. I don’t know if anyone thinks about it from an artist’s perspective and how that frees an artist instead of trapping them.

Even though I talk about being afraid or something, it also feels really necessary that I am uncomfortable in all of it for it to be good. I don’t mind repeating it if it feels inspired in some way but there’s some mechanism in me where I’m like this is the next layer of something. I’m not sacred about what that has to be. If I wanted to just dress and it be exactly like last time and that felt like what I was supposed to do then I would do it. And it allows it to be exploratory again. You find new things. There are new layers to go to. And the riskiness of it helps everything. Also, it helps you frame it all as an era. And it helps me psyche myself up for it.

What era is this for you?

I don’t know. This one. If there is a mission statement, energetically, it’s trying to unite everything. Not have it feel like such an extreme A to B. The music, I’ve always been very, very serious about it. This is high art. We are going in, you know what I mean? It’s felt stuffy in a way that I like. It makes me really proud that I feel so smart when I’m writing, and I feel very taken seriously. And I want to be taken seriously. But I feel like I’m less concerned with that now. And I want the music to have more information included because I’m not afraid it’s going to cancel itself out. I can wink, or it can be more about who I am as a person. It can be more inside of everything, which is relieving in some ways because then it’s more me. But it’s also scarier because it feels more vulnerable. Also, how do you be more you? If that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s impossible. I was supposed to do a press thing where I was supposed to go say something really poignant for 20 minutes. And then I was like, the more I think about saying something poignant the less poignant it’s going to be. Or if I have a meeting and someone’s like, “You’re so funny and weird and all the stuff we’re going to do for promo should be more funny and weird.” I’m like okay, but I think if I think too hard about being funny and weird it won’t be any of those things.

That’s something I loved about the album. It’s almost the antithesis of this process, where I’m asking you to distill all of these things into statements or ideas that are not even super conscious all the time. In so many of the songs there are these questioning lyrics and to me they seem more like questions to yourself. It feels like a process of thinking and how to navigate thought. I was wondering if that was something that was conscious to you as you were writing? Like, I’m going to make an album about my thoughts and the things that come in and out of my brain. The wrestling between the noise and the peace.

Yeah. I think it’s really freeing. A lot of those songs aren’t the result of me figuring it out and then sharing the result.

The music almost feels anti-figuring it out. Like, how do we sit with the noise?

That in itself becomes really relieving. Because a lot of thoughts are just like an ambient weight on you that I’m constantly trying to soothe or figure out or unpack. But it feels un-unpackable. There’s no way around it being confusing. At least I’m incapable of reckoning with this thing fully. And so, it’s relieving for that to be intact in the sharing of it. I think that does allow it to dissipate a little bit. Not the thing itself, but your obsession with trying to figure things out.

It’s like how people say the only way to manage thoughts is to actually not fight them or push them away or indulge them. Just acknowledge them. Is the music acknowledging the workings of your brain without deciding that I’m going to change something or address it or fight it? This whole project feels like one intrusive thought where it’s you just expressing those and how they manifest in your brain without necessarily needing to resolve anything.

That is very maddening to me. Intrusive thoughts are very real to me. I have those. But I intellectually recognize them as intrusive thoughts. It’s not like I’m being fully piloted by them, but I also know that I am. The older I get the more I realize that I’m just in the throes of it. I think behaviorally I am, but I also have this understanding that, Oh, maybe this feeling is just fake. Or maybe it’s not real even if I’m feeling it so deeply. I still, 90% of the time, act solely based on it. That has also been really heartbreaking because I’m not going to think my way out of this thing. The solution is not just spiraling at home. So why am I insisting on doing that? And why am I so unwilling to move towards something that’s actually been proven to help me? Which is to leave the house, or talk to people, or exercise. But then beyond my own personal problems, the earth is on fire. We had an earthquake the other day, and I was feeling very cozy on my couch. I was like, oh everything’s okay. I had my dog and was playing Elden Ring. I was feeling cozy. And then the earthquake happens, and it’s like, Oh, I’m going to die. Alan’s gonna die. My dog’s going to die. People are dying.

In the two music videos you’ve given us, there are both gestures at the end that are playing out your death. You’re deepthroating a gun and you’re deepthroating a gasoline pump and lighting yourself on fire. I feel like it’s one of the more common intrusive thoughts, like when you’re driving and you know you can just swerve and do something dangerous. It’s not totally morbid, but there are just things that come up in our brains because that’s how we all are. I was wondering if those images in the videos were versions of those thoughts?

When I would do mushrooms I would think about dying and just laugh and laugh and laugh. I would think about climate change and look around. Like one time at the park there was a tree that was just burnt, and I was like, Ahahaha. Laughing and laughing about it. I think because it just is. I wanted that to be in the album too. I wanted everything to be in there. Because it feels very selfish. I’m so obsessed with wanting to be a good person and being afraid that Alan is going to die, that I just lay on the couch thinking about those things. I don’t talk to him. I don’t do anything while I’m here. The thing I’m worrying about protecting, I’m not engaging it or doing anything about it. I’m just dreading it being taken away. So, it is play acting for when it happens, which is kind of like on the plane when I’m so terrified of turbulence and then when the turbulence is really bad I’m eerily kind of calm. Like I have been preparing for it. I have already had the feelings before it happened.

It’s like what you said about not wanting to leave the house but then when you’re at the party you’re fine. When you’re confronted with the thing it suddenly becomes very manageable and the worst thing is like the 40 minutes before.

I think a lot of the songs are like exposure therapy. It’s at least attempting to feel more as opposed to just thinking. It’s trying to actually go towards a realized version instead of conceptual.

That comes across. It comes across in all of your music, but more acutely here. You pose questions that are very existential or could be very troubling and then you just move through them. There’s also so many characters in this album, named and unnamed. When you’re writing do you think of these characters as actual people or versions of yourself?

All of the characters are really people, and I’m thinking of them. But also, like, Jason is an archetype of a man. Even with my personal dealings with these people, I was aware that I was archetyping them. I was dealing with my concept of them as much as who they actually are. And what validation from this type of man means to me. Also, creating a scene. Some of those songs feel like I can’t just explain what I’m thinking. Partly because I don’t fully understand it. Partly because it would be a disservice. It’s a constellation of things. Some of them are very personal and about the actual person and some are just about my ideas of people and my own personal shit that I’m bringing in to it. Casting them all as them but also like representing something lets that all exist at the same time.

With the “No Front Teeth” video, you made this filter thing where one could create their own captions for the video. In the video, as it is, the dialogue in captions doesn’t necessarily have to cohere to the images or what’s being shown. It’s just fantasy. In wanting people to put their own words to it, was that a way to immerse them into this thought experiment?

I think so. I’m also just really glad people like it. And feel like they can connect to it. In a way that’s maybe similar to what I was imagining, but also delightfully different sometimes. Still, a lot of people are responding, “What is this about?” Or, “What genre is this?” People keep asking me about the album cover, “What is the aesthetic of this?” It’s like, I don’t know. So, it’s interesting to see people add seemingly nonsense or whatever but then there’s a little bit of felt seriousness in it too. And I think that’s how the captions feel. Some of them make me laugh. Some of them give me chills for a second. Like that feels eerie. But also all of it requires a balance. We did those captions and at first we were like maybe we shouldn’t have any captions at all. Maybe it’s more effective to not know what we’re saying and people just get to imagine it. But then we put a ton of captions on it and we found a balance that I really like. The ones that stayed are the ones that should have.

I don’t know if I’ve laughed so hard — the women in music line. Like, we’re women in music. I liked, in a trickister-y way that this video isn’t easy dissectible. And now adding this option for people to put their own captions to it adds to that.

It’s more like a feeling. Did you see the movie The Beast? I loved it. But some of it was bad and some of it was amazing. And sometimes I was like, Wait, are they saying that? Is this what they mean? But then it’s like who fucking cares. I think everyone is obsessed with figuring out what the mission statement behind everything is. Like what is this saying about women, or something. It is saying something sometimes, and sometimes it isn’t. I like the things it makes me think about. Not what I’ve been told what I’m supposed to think about. What naturally comes up. I also don’t care if I’m then wrong. Or the next scene nothing is in there. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And to that point of figuring out what a movie is trying to say or what an album is trying to say — maybe the glory of life, to use your title, is actually deciding I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be okay not going through with the process of deciphering. Letting something wash over me without having to add comprehension as the goal.

Yeah and then your body starts figuring out things. There are other ways that are unknown to you. There are little pieces moving around all over the place that are organizing and making little pathways. That movie had that relief to it, that I’m talking about. You can just be in it and it just unfolds.

Speaking of the body, I’m sure when people talk about this album they’re not going to necessarily draw comparisons to Ugly Season, because outwardly it’s a very different sound and project, but given that it was so dance-focused and about being embodied, did that play into writing this record as well? Like what you got from that process of movement?

I mean, there’s a lot. When I did the dance with Kate Wallich, I was in love with her. I was in love with everybody. I felt very present in a way that I hadn’t felt for years. And, in a creative fantasy environment too. It was my job and their job to be there and to dance. So all of those things blending together will inform everything I do. It also shows me when I’m not connected to that. It ended and Covid happened and I just had no access to those specific frameworks, to play inside of that. It was like, how do I carry all of that, those things I learned and those feelings, when it’s not available to me in that specific way? It’s like The Beast. Maybe if I watched that before the dance I would feel different about it. I wouldn’t have that somatic response to certain things. Where now I’m allowing them to wash over me and happen instead of analyzing.

Even when we’re talking about being isolated and internal, I think that I thought that all my songs and everything came from me thinking really hard. But I don’t think they really do. Even though I think about being disembodied all the time, I think I’m weirdly like always embodied in some ways. It’s this really weird competition. I think the dance and all of that made some things really clear to me, where the disconnects are and where they should be and who cares. It made me more willing to go to certain places. Also, I was surprised during the dance. I was surprised at what was helping me figure things out. It became rolling around with people and lifting them up. I wasn’t on Wikipedia or anything.

Do you have teeth nightmares?

No, I think I have before. But most of my nightmares are like, I’m incapacitated in some way. I can’t talk. I’m supposed to but I can’t. I’m lethargic and I’m supposed to get somewhere but I can’t get there.

That reminds me of the opening to the “It’s a Mirror” video. Waking up in that discomfort. Feeling like you’re disoriented and not in control of what’s happening around you.

Do you remember the scene in Cries and Whispers? I think I posted about it on Instagram. She’s like cycling through grief. She’s on the bed and she’s like seemingly cycling through every emotion? And riding the wave of it. That was the original inspiration for that. Fully stuck in your own wave.

It almost feels like sleep paralysis.

Yeah. It doesn’t match the circumstances at all. I’m like in bed and everything’s fine. But I’m stuck.

How did you engage Aldous Haring for the “No Front Teeth” song and the video? It requires putting a lot of yourself. Like, getting an artist who is down to play like that is really amazing.

I had no question about her capability to do it. I knew she would be incredible at it. Same with the song. I could just hear her voice right away on it and just knew that if she was down to do it, whatever she sent me was going to be amazing. But it required a lot of trust from her. Because I know Cody. It could be completely different from what we intended, but I knew I was going to love it and fully trust him. But she didn’t know Cody. She only knew me and Alan. I tried to give her as much information as possible, even the parts that were open-ended and we would be acting. Trying to give her framework. And she was just so down to do everything. It was wild. We just clicked into it seamlessly. With always being like, “Oh god, what if we’re ugly? What if this is stupid?” We both figured out a way to navigate that together. She was just down. Even when I wrote the lyrics to it. I just knew she’d understand. We have similar instincts and ways of operating. And we’ve done similar things in our lives. I knew she’d know what that song was about. Even if she doesn’t directly know everything that I’m referencing, she would know where it was coming from. I don’t know how we did it. It was really full on. A lot of the scenes were just playing this Ave Maria remix over and over and over.

That was your backing track?

Yeah. I don’t know. It was just deranged. I kind of love it, unironically. But also it’s so demented and funny. There are tons of people there. People making the waffles for the waffle party. And they were real. Somehow everyone clicked into it. Even the art department putting all the cords and easter eggs and the combination of some of it being absurd and dumb and some of it being really personal. We somehow all managed to create that world together with just the framework. It wasn’t 100% storyboarded. It was some of that but it was open.

People use Lynchian so flexibly to describe anything that’s somewhat surreal. What’s truly Lynchian about the video is that there’s an internal logic. It makes no sense yet every move feels so organic. Just the emotional logic.

It feels very intentional the whole time. It feels like everything has equal weight. Regardless if it’s horrifying or silly. It all has equal resonance.

Photography: Cody Critcheloe

“La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid,” wrote Pierre de Choderlos de Laclos, in his 1782 classic Les Liaisons Dangereuses. But the English version of the delicious phrase has been uttered in pop culture many times since, by everyone from Dorothy Parker to The Godfather’s Don Vito Corleone: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

And while the chilling epithet may be true, retribution can come in many forms, and on the ferocious new Revengeseekerz, the electro-indie-digi-punk savant that is Jane Remover comes in hot — as well as relentless, slightly mad, funny and liberated like never before. The third album from Jane [they/them] was a surprise drop last Friday, to the delight of the artist’s faithful, who knew the LP was imminent.

Jane has for half a decade kept us guessing, resisted boxes – musical or otherwise – and often vowed never to repeat themselves, record to record, and Revengeseekerz checks that box. It was presaged by a string of singles last summer intended for another project and which sounded nothing like the new album; then a wry, killer New Year’s Day track, “JRJRJR”; an infectious club banger, “Dancing with your eyes closed”; and the no-fanfare Valentine’s Day drop of Ghostholding, the debut full-length from Jane’s more understated side project, Venturing. But none of it prepared us for the sonic beast that is Revengeseekerz. Crashing, sample-heavy, jagged electronics (“TWICE REMOVED,” “Dreamflasher,” the anything-goes “TURN UP OR DIE”) butt up against frantic dance tracks, including “Psychoboost,” a 150 bpm piledriver with an appropriately unhinged feature from rap wild man Danny Brown, who in a recent post called Revengeseekerz the “album of the year.” And while it’s only just April? It deserves a place in that conversation.

Superficially, the LP’s return to electronics may have more in common with Jane Remover’s 2021 debut Frailty – a smash ‘n grab triumph of queer Gen Z bedroom confessionals, digicore maelstroms – than it does with their acclaimed 2023 turn toward darker, American goth-horror shoegaze, Census Designated. But Revengeseekerz is by no means a step back. There was a manic quality to Frailty as well, but as Jane has pointed out, that record was the product of a 17-year-old, whereas Revengeseekerz not only doubles down on the frenzy but brims with an empowerment and lack of inhibition of an artist who now, at 21, creates at a home studio in their adopted home of Chicago, hundreds of miles from their native New Jersey.

Jane predicted two years ago that “whatever comes next” after Census would offer a marked contrast, and holy moly if that isn’t true. Against a blown-out electronic wall in the chop-and-change “Experimental Skin,” their vocal, just discernible beneath the squall, admits they “might be falling for you” but on the other hand wonders, “I think that I don’t have a soul.” On a lyrically unfiltered “Star people,” (partly inspired by the late George Michael, who had a song of the same name) Jane offers, “I look at him like that cause I’m a fucking perv” and “we should film a sex tape and then leak it.” “Psychoboost” builds to a tornadic finish, and the refrain “don’t get greedy or you might get hurt.”

As the album’s name suggests, scores are settled throughout. Revengeseekerz’ title is loosely connected to Kill Bill, Jane’s favorite movie, a fact which alone should tell you that crossing the artist might not be advisable. Another influence was electro-hardcore act Machine Girl’s unrelenting 2017 releases Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything About You. Jane’s vivid imagination for retributory violence is familiar to anyone who remembers the harrowing “part two” of their 2021 epic “movies for guys” in which our narrator takes glass shards to an offender and blithely kicks back to watch TV as the chud bleeds out on the sidewalk. Suffice to say, Revengeseekerz serves more of where that came from. “angels in camo” opens with, “Dear God, place a curse on those who wronged me” and later declares, “I can’t let these bitches win.” “TURN UP OR DIE” declares, “Give dead bitches proper sendoff. Explosive bitch, blow his head off.” “And on Experimental Skin”: “I wanna sin, blow the city up.”

Make no mistake: the album is a freewheeling blast, and Jane calls it the “most fun” they have had making music in a long time. Still, while not didactically political, the significance of a record with vengeance on its mind, by a young queer artist – Jane came out as a trans woman in 2022 – dropping at this moment in history, in which marginalized people, none more so than the trans community, are regularly demonized and lied about and hatred against them is weaponized at the highest seats of power, cannot be ignored. Revengeseekez is a rush, but it also matters.

Its brash sonic bad-assery is complemented by a hell of a JR glow-up in the past year. The artist who once sported wire rims and christened the zany, glitchy microgenre they fashioned in their teen come-up as “dariacore” has done a Black Swan move and – ever one to throw a metaphorical match to their past work – set themselves on fire in the dramatic cover photo for Revengeseekerz. An arresting image for a stunner of a record, which has no doubt left jaws dropped, possibly blown a speaker or two and will like leave venue walls and floors shaking when Jane’s TURN UP OR DIE tour launches later this month. PAPER sat down with the self-described “shapeshifter” in their publicists’ Lower East Side office in late March.

JR! What a monster of a record. I want you to know I first heard Revengeseekerz about 48 hours before Playboi Carti’s MUSIC – maybe the most talked about record of the year – dropped – and I was no less blown away by your record than by his.

I love Carti’s album!

I like it too, but to think what you have achieved with this, working all on your own, with just the one feature from Danny Brown, it’s just amazing. So you had some singles out last summer that were not part of this album, when did this record all come together?

Yeah, “Magic I Want U,” “How to Teleport” and “Flash In the Pan,” they were all part of an album that I was working on last summer. And I left it unfinished, but I remember halfway through the [JPEGMAFIA] tour I was like, “This isn’t what I want to do.” But honestly a lot of the ideas from that project ended up seeping into Revengeseekerz. So I know that a lot of my fans were upset like, “Oh why didn’t you just drop that album instead?” But, if you hear that album and Revengeseekerz back-to-back, the ideas are basically the same, melodically, sonically. Even though Revengeseekers is way more mechanical, and cold.

Do you remember what the first songs you did on it were and how they came about?

Yeah, I came home from tour and instantly “JRJRJR” was the first song I made. It was the only one that was finished, for three months!

So that was September-ish?

Yeah I came home the week of my birthday. The day I touched down back at my place was September 25. Then literally three days later I made “JRJRJR.” While I was on tour I basically had a track list done, and it’s not identical to the track list that is here in front of us, but I knew “JRJRJR” was gonna be the last track for sure. And also I thought it would be funny to have the lead single be the last track on the album.

That song and “Dancing with your eyes closed” both dropped earlier in the year, and in a way it feels like you were easing people into this album, because in a sense they are simpler to digest than some of the more chaotic tracks like “Experimental Skin” or “TURN UP OR DIE.” Does that make sense?

Yeah, it’s funny cause those – “Dancing” and “JRJRJR” – are so loaded. But at the same time, they were teasers for the rest of the album. Like appetizers, almost.

If things really started happening in September to me that sounds like you work pretty fast.

I was grinding! Cause, Revengezeekerz and the [side project] Venturing album Ghostholding, I did those at the same time.

Like, back and forth?

Yeah! So the first actual song I made when I came home was “Sister,” off the Venturing album. I wrote that one a long time ago. Then “JRJRJR.”

I suppose if you were gonna be reductive, this album is more like Frailty than it is like Census? I don’t even know if you would agree with that, but I also think it’s different. It’s got a boldness and this feeling of empowerment and fearlessness I would say that could only have come from these last few years. Do you agree?

Yeah, I think so too. Because, production-wise it definitely is closer to Frailty than it is to Census because Frailty was, there was a lot of dance-oriented tracks on there, and half of this album is EDM. But still, I didn’t put down the guitar at all for this album. Out of seven, of the twelve songs on this album I’m still playing guitar on it. I wanted to find a way to – cause I’ve grown more confident in my guitar playing abiliities, so I’m like, why would I not want to put it on the album?

Do you feel like Revengeseekerz could not exist had you not gone through Census Designated?

No. In a way, you know how Census is a product of Frailty, where it was everything that came after Frailty fueled what made Census? So now it’s like, in a way everything that did come after Census is what is fueling Revengeseekerz in a way. And it’s not just that – the second album has to happen in order for the third album to happen. And, whatever I make after this album, this album has to happen in order for me to think about what I want to do next.

Last year it felt like maybe there was a new aesthetic era coming too when you dropped a visualizer for “Flash In the Pan” which was you hanging out the car window, right?

Yeah like smoking out the window.

Which was super cool, and it reminded me, didn’t Leroy [Jane’s ‘dariacore’ 2021 alter ego] have a song called “dyed my hair black”?

“Dyed my hair black” – yeah, was one of my favorites, honestly!

Yeah, dude some of those old titles were so cool, one was like, “not in Pride month”?

Oh yeah, “during Pride month?”

Yeah that’s it. Awesome. So wait, is your hair naturally that dark?

I dyed my hair the last time was probably a month and a half ago. So it’s probably faded by now. But my hair’s naturally brown.

A lighter brown?

Yeah so it’s not that much of a difference, but honestly you’re the first person to point out that I did dye my hair black for that shoot. [Laughs].

Well I thought so but I wasn’t sure. Your fans’ subreddit was talking a lot recently about your “aura farming” – not sure how you feel about that – and it really ramped up with the Jane-on-fire photos. How did that idea come about?

The fire was partially my idea, and partially the photographer Brendon’s idea. [Brendon Burton] I gave him a visually rough idea of, “This is what I’m thinking,” and it was honestly based off of a lot of video game screenshots. And then we scouted a place, and we shot in Oxnard, California. And he was like, “This is how you make a fire.” Essentially. It’s basically just butane, water, and soap. Basically the water doesn’t catch fire, it’s just the bubbles. And since the bubbles are in contact with the water, so the second the fire touches the water it gets put out. So you don’t really get burned. My hair caught fire…

I was wondering about your hair.

Yeah every picture we took the flame lasted probably like three seconds. It was a little science moment. But my hair caught fire probably fifty times! [Laughs] You can see in some of the photos, my hair, burnt to a crisp a little bit. I remember I came home, or we pulled up to some surf n turf spot, and I was just smelling like butane fire.

The title Revengeseekerz and a lot of the lyrics are vengeful in nature, one way or another – for me, there is a lot to unpack there. You know, “angels in camo” lays it all out, right off the top, of “Dear God, place a curse on those who wronged me.” Was there an individual or several people in mind in terms of the target of the revenge mindset?

Yeah, in a way I feel like there are people that I have a right to genuinely be mad at, but Revengeseekerz is a lot like a “blind rage” album, where it’s like, yeah there are people that I am mad at, people that have wronged me. But they are assimilated with everybody else, so it’s like just swinging it at literally everyone, in a sense. So it’s like – I feel like I have a big sword. Imagine if we’re in a Kill Bill scene. Honestly that’s where Revengeseekerz, the title comes from. Cause it used to be – I had an account with the username Revengeseekerz, with the “z” on It, and it was Kill Bill-themed. Cause that’s my favorite movie. It’s like that one scene where they are at the bar, where the Yakuza come in, and she [Uma Thurman, as The Bride] is just swinging her sword at literally everyone, and behind her his head flies off, and in front of her his legs come off and it’s just a bloody mess, she doesn’t even know who she’s hitting. That’s what it feels like, the album, to me. I guess, everybody who has wronged me is in the crowd of everybody else, who I know and love, so it’s like, yeah I’m seeking revenge, I guess, on people who have wronged me, but I’m also hurting people that I love in the process. And sometimes I don’t even know who I’m mad at. That’s also the blind rage part of it, where it’s like, “Yeah, I’m mad, and I feel like I have a right to be mad, but who am I mad at?”

So a line like, “I can’t let these bitches win,” the bitches aren’t necessarily anyone in particular?

Yeah I mean, for all I know, it could mean literally anyone else. Sometimes when you’re mad at one person, you’re mad at everyone.

Also in “angels in camo” you have the “Jesus never had it with a freak bitch” line?

I thought that was hard!

Yeah! I would say!

That shit is hard! I’ve – and honestly, my manager didn’t like this at all – but I was like, I have to have a certain “zestiness” quota, for lack of a better term, on this album. So every song, or most songs, there’s one line where it’s like, “it would be so fucking funny to like hear the fans sing this back to me!” [Chuckles]

“Dreamflasher” is another favorite of mine – and this is saying a lot for this album, but it’s the most bananas, so much going on, just this symphony of sounds and drops and bells and jagged shit. I don’t know if you can say anything about making that song, is it fun creating a track that is kind of crazy?

Yeah. That was so much fun! That’s honestly, like, my two most favorite songs to make on this album were “Dreamflasher” and “TURN UP OR DIE.” I feel like both took, two studios sessions each to fully finish it.

Oh really? You do work fast. Damn.

On a song like “TURN UP OR DIE,” that’s two studio sessions. I started at like 2pm and I ended at like 5am. But it felt so good, to have that, render my song at like 5am, and then be like, “Yeah. It’s done.” [Laughs]

You mentioned Kill Bill and I am sure fans remember some of your more visual songs like on Census or the pretty heavy part two of “movies for guys.” It feels like you have a book in you, like you could write a heavy duty book.

I’m flattered, but I feel like my storytelling capabilities have only worsened, probably.

Really?

Yeah. Cause I used to have Soundcloud accounts where I told, even with Venturing I tried to make it its own little story. I tried to do a bunch of world-building around that, and tried to connect it to this other Soundcloud account, and I feel like my abilities in that just only got worse and worse. So that’s why I just killed the whole thing. I was like, “Let me me have this side account for the vibes. And not for the story.” But I don’t know what happened, honestly. It’s the same thing as – I used to be able to fully imagine pictures in my head. It’s called, “aphantasia” I think. You know that one diagram of the person imagining apples in their head? And it’s like, one being a perfectly clear apple and five being nothing? I think I used to be at a one or two and the past few years, I’m at a four or five now.

Interesting.

But it’s different with music. I feel like music is the other way around, where I can fully imagine songs now. Whereas I used to only be able to imagine pictures, now I can only imagine songs.

Some of these lines, like “I wanna blow the city up” in “Experimental Skin,” or “Explosive bitch blow his head off” in “TURN UP OR DIE”… I don’t want to cross you, I know that much! But it’s interesting to me because you don’t seem like somebody who has this super short temper?

No, I’m not. It’s weird, honestly. I feel like I’m a chill person. But I also have no chill. I feel like I almost never act out of anger, I honestly don’t have a temper. But I also feel like I’ve never really chilled out a day in my life. I feel like there’s always something on my mind that’s bothering me.

You don’t seem, publicly, like an explicitly political person. But there is no getting away from the fact that a queer artist is releasing a record called Revengeseekerz in this very fraught, dark moment in time that we are in. I can’t help but see it in that context too? You know, I personally feel quite vengeful toward these people who are every single day trying to inflict more harm on marginalized and vulnerable people, right?

Yeah, I mean honestly, I see it in my family, I see it in everything.

But is the revenge-seeking that’s through a lot of the record, is it a more personal kind of revenge, or do you see it working in that larger, sociological way?

I can see how it can apply to that. And I like that. Cause there’s the saying about how when the music comes out, it no longer belongs to you. And so, now – it could be revenge on the whole world, if you wanted it to. And that’s also why it’s so accentuated sometimes. You know when I say, “explosive bitch, blow his head off,” or “I wanna blow the city up.” It’s not as in Joker shit! [Laughs]

I was once, long ago, acquaintances, even friends, with George Michael. Interviewed him a bunch. And I bring this up, of course…

Because there are multiple George Michael references on here.

Exactly! And when I first saw you had a song called “Star people” I remembered that George had a song by the same name, which I talked to him about when his Older album came out [1996]. And then I saw your lyrics and heard the song, which actually borrows some phrases from his song, like the “soul turning green,” “maybe momma gave you up,” and then you even say, “I’m on some George Michael Freek” and I just thought that was all so cool, cause I think there are a lot of 21-year-olds who don’t even know who he was

I love George Michael! I can’t remember how I first got into him. I only just recently got Older on CD. But I’ve liked that album for a minute. I always feel like rooting for a gay pop star. I love when a pop star is gay. And also his voice is so beautiful, and a lot of his songs I relate to.

I assume you know the story of how he was outed in a big tabloid incident, an undercover cop was in a public rest room in Beverly Hills…

Yeah and we see that happen time and time again now, and it’s just that now it’s more adjusted to the modern things. We just see the story of how George Michael got outed today but in other ways, with a bunch of people. But I feel like the way that he responded to it, and how he was so chill about it in every interview, I was like, “Damn. That’s so admirable.”

Was there anything you wanted to say with “Star people”? What’s that line about, “My mother told me…”?

Oh yeah, “My mother called me, said ‘don’t let that fame sleep in your bed.’”

And “I blew up fast, grew up faster sleeping with the dead.”

That’s playing with your life. That song is the most all over the place on the album, I think. Cause the first half of it, or actually the whole song is this overarching theme of how being in music, it’s like a dick-swinging contest. That’s what – again with the zestiness quota of this album, “We should film a sex tape and press leak it” – yah! But I feel it’s partially about how fleeting love is, and it’s the feeling that every good thing in your life is going to go. Especially love. All the good things that you have. Fame, money, love. I feel like rather than celebrating it, that I take advantage of it, and I just wait for it to go, at any second. I feel like that’s why it’s the most frantic-sounding on the album, and why lyrically it’s all over the place, and there’s just a random switch-up.

You’ve spoken before about how you, maybe not over-think, but you think a lot about things, and maybe you’ll have internal debates about things. Is that mainly about your art, or is it about other things as well?

Honestly, it’s about everything. But on the bright side, I kinda have more access to things than I did before. I finally have money to buy cool clothes. Earlier in my life I never really thought about getting cool clothes, because I just didn’t really have money. So I was just like, “Let me just wear whatever I have sitting around.” And that’s honestly how my whole fashion sense was until I moved and now that I’m like – now that I can buy more, actual, cool-looking clothes, it’s like, “Hmm, what do I want to look like when I walk out the door? How do I want to go about my day?” Even though I’m not fully there. You know? It’s like, “How do I want my catalog to look in ten years?” You know? “How do I want to brand myself?”

Do you think that far ahead? Or are you just focused on, say, the next project?

I don’t know, because sometimes – cause honestly I have thought about what the fourth album is going to sound like, already. But I feel like maybe next time around, like it’ll be the first time that my ideas – cause I have really big ideas? But never enough money to really make it look like how I can picture it? But I feel like maybe next time around, if this album does well enough, I can fully visualize how I want that album to sound like.

Photography: Parker Corey, Joriel Cura, Athena Merry