Live Review: Perfume Genius, Hand Habits @ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

In the lonely, mirthful fog of the silly season — that strange December drift where joy and exhaustion mingle — an uplifting blend of candour and theatricality cut through the haze at the Sydney Opera House.

Hand Habits broke the silent darkness with a slow-rising deep blue, diving into More Today. The tender, confessional number permeated the cerulean mist drifting in like a memory from the harbour beyond the Concert Hall walls.

Singer and lyricist Meg Duffy’s words cut through the room’s muddy murmurs, with flashes of tortured love surfacing in lines such as “I want it all or nothing.” Duffy kept the audience in the dark — literally — requesting: “No Graham, don’t turn the lights on. I don’t want to see these beautiful people.”

The rolling darkness suited them; this was the last show of the year, and the set became a kind of emotional offloading purged through the music. “If I talk too much about this year, I’m gonna cry, so I’m gonna leave it on the stage.”

They did exactly that. A slate of soaring, heartfelt songs made the melancholic majestic. Placeholder felt ancient and intimate all at once; folkloric yet deeply personal. The refrain “I was just a placeholder with nothing to stand for” carried a quiet bruise, speaking to absence, reunion and the ghosts that haunt the space between.

“This is from the new album,” Duffy noted, before moving into Bluebird of Happiness, a song threaded with wounded vocals and soft, suspended symbolism.

Soon after, Duffy reminded the crowd of the night’s interlinking worlds: “When we’re all playing together, and I’m singing, it’s called Hand Habits. We all play in Perfume Genius, so if you can’t wait for us to leave, it’s gonna be a long night.”

The audience didn’t seem to mind.

A flurry of lights and sound then welcomed Perfume Genius — the project of Mike Hadreas — to the stage, opening with In A Row from Glory (2025). “Hi. Thank you for coming,” he offered, before the Concert Hall erupted again, coloured beams shooting across the space like a summer electrical storm.

Hadreas’ arrival underscored the Opera House’s promise of visceral, theatrical performance. Across seven acclaimed albums, he has carved out a singular place in contemporary art-pop, shifting between tenderness, grandeur and something rawer at the edges.

Glory, created in close partnership with pianist and partner Alan Wyffels, producer Blake Mills and the same bandmates who opened the evening, has been framed as his most intimate record yet — and onstage, that intimacy radiated in unexpected directions.

He pulled at the frayed threads of his glittery shirt: “I thought this shirt would last the whole tour. I kinda workshopped it before the show… it looks cool like that.” Each aside disarmed the room before plunging back into the blistering light show that sliced him into silhouette as he ragdolled across the rotating platform.

When It’s a Mirror arrived (Glory’s lead single), its pulsing insistence surged through the crowd. High in the mezzanine, an audience member danced with total abandon, arms thrown wide, as Hadreas leaned into the track’s triumphant burn.

The mood shifted with Left For Tomorrow: a gentler turn. Wyffels’ piano glowed beneath the arrangement, and the refrain “You found her” landed with aching clarity. Moments earlier, ablaze, the Concert Hall settled into something hushed.

Hadreas scanned the setlist. “What’s the next song?” he joked, before launching into Valley, its brightness tempered by his elastic, vibrato-laced vocals. Afterwards came a moment of plain-spoken sincerity: “It really is a dream to play here. Last time we came, it was just me and Al. It’s nice to be enjoying it. Hard to be enjoying it when you’re scared.” He drifted briefly into a story about a disastrous “Disney thing in Ballarat,” claiming he only realised how poorly it was going because he “kept edging and edging.”

A stripped-back trio of piano, drums and vocals steered the night into Me & Angel, Hadreas’ voice slipping into a spectral falsetto. By Your Side followed, echo trailing his lines as he paced the stage with a kind of searching tenderness.

The twinkling keys of Clean Heart glimmered like a closing incantation, a final reminder of the emotional terrain Hadreas continues to chart – queerness, vulnerability, transformation – the terrain that has come to define him.

And as the last notes dissolved, that rare blend of candour and theatricality that threaded through both sets seemed to push outward rather than fade, casting a soft glow toward the months ahead. In the thick of the silly season’s lonely, mirthful fog, it felt like an unexpected kind of solace; a small gift placed gently in the hands of everyone present, carried with the promise of something brighter still to come.