Mike Hadreas is a master of tonal tension and ambiguity. “Whole Life,” the impossibly dreamy opener from his fifth Perfume Genius LP, meditates on a dual image of decay and renewal: “Half of my whole life is done/ Let it drift and wash away,” he sings over bittersweet strings and a resilient, arpeggiated piano. “Shadows soften toward some tender light/ In slow motion I leave them behind.” It begs the question, “If we die a little each day, aren’t we also reborn in the voids left behind?” Set My Heart on Fire Immediately thrives on those emotional juxtapositions. On “Without You,” a strummy, starry-eyed anthem, Hadreas seems to fixate on the temporal distance between himself and a very important person: “It’s been such a long, long time,” he croons, but the lyric is uplifted by the major-key splendor of his velvety vocal. With “Describe,” the singer begs a companion to explain what happiness feels like, as if the sensation had been translated into a different emotional language. It’s a devastating idea, but his falsetto swoons as if it’s made peace with that fact, wading in an ocean of soothing shoegaze fuzz and slideguitar melodies. A cast of A-list collaborators—including bassist Pino Palladino, drummer Jim Keltner and producer Blake Mills—bring visceral, physical impact to these moments of sonic and thematic complexity. One of the album’s most upbeat moments, fizzy funk-pop banger “On the Floor,” grooves like D’Angelo before Hadreas’ angelic vocal sends into a twinkling cosmos of reverb. With Perfume Genius, there are layers hidden behind layers.