In Photos: Perfume Genius @ The Sugar Club, Dublin (18.05.11)

Mike Hadreas's achingly intimate songs of loneliness and despair do not make for easy listening in the company of others. Learning, the Seattleite's debut album as Perfume Genius, is pure lying-awake-alone-at-5am stuff – the kind of emotional release that only really works in the right context. So the comfy surroundings of Dublin's Sugar Club are about as wide a space as Ragged Words can imagine Hadreas occupying; a room any larger, and the raw intensity of the material would likely be diluted. Fiona Diffley got close enough to Hadreas (alone at the piano throughout, save for a brief duet) to snap a few photos. You can view a slideshow of her black-and-white shots by clicking on any of the images below.