Single Review: Perfume – Sumikko Disco

When I first heard a snippet of “Sumikko Disco”, I was thrilled to hear that it was cut from the same cloth as “1mm”. And having since heard the song in full, it truly is cut from the same cloth, through and through. An 80s sound with a bounce and a slight R&B undertone is a surprisingly good sweet spot for Perfume, which they had dabbled with from as early as Triangle’s “Kiss and Music”. This sound was completely dashed on JPN. But we thankfully saw a return to it on LEVEL3. Just for it to be dashed again for the next two albums, Cosmic Explorer and Future Pop. But Perfume’s producer, Nakata Yasutaka, saw the error of his ways, because he turned that car the fuck around for Plasma, where he revisited the sound and then some. But even so; as much as I liked Plasma, I wished he would have pushed it further. Especially after hearing what he did with Capsule’s Metro Pulse. An album which had songs which I felt would have really elevated Plasma. And “Sumikko Disco” sounds more like a Metro Pulse cut than it does a Plasma one outright. So I ain’t mad at that.

Nakata seems to be in this state of looking back. Whether it’s looking back on Perfume and Capsule’s older material specifically, or just looking back on music of the 80s (and the 90s in the case of Pussy Pam’s Candy Racer) in general. Whatever the reason, it’s yielding good results. After some questionable album turns for Perfume, Capsule and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, which had some of us wondering if shit would ever get better for any of them, he followed up with solid albums which I think many would agree were shining moments in each of their discographies. But whilst Nakata does seem to be on the right track and have his shit together again when it comes to his sound, I still feel he’s coasting, when he should have his foot down on the pedal. Because where he has Perfume’s sound at the moment is where it should have been 10 years ago. Plasma is the album we should’ve gotten after LEVEL3. So we’re making up for lost time right now. And Perfume’s music isn’t moving far enough ahead. And it’s unfortunate that as much as I really like “Sumikko Disco”, it also feels like an example to my point in the same way that “Moon” was. The sound is great. But the song structure leaves something to be desired. And Perfume’s vocals aren’t where they should be to better match the sound and the vibe of the song, in addition to providing a new edge to their music which fans haven’t heard before.

Perfume – Sumikko Disco | Polydor Records / Universal Music

My thoughts on “Sumikko Disco” are similar to how I feel about quite a few of Perfume’s songs these days, which is that there is a great song in here, slightly hampered by a song structure which does not feel fully realised. It seems like Nakata writes a verse and a chorus and has a clear idea in his head about how these sections should sound, but he doesn’t know what to do with the moments in-between or either side of them. So we either end up with instances where Nakata just copies and pastes instrumental sections to pad the song out, without writing additional lyrics. Or we end up with just a verse, a chorus, the same verse, a chorus and then the song just ending in under 3 minutes. That intuition Nakata seemed to have when it came to song structures in 2007 and 2008, it’s inconsistent these days. It’s hard to say on the spot what I would do to change “Sumikko Disco”. But something about it doesn’t quite flow the way my own intuition feels that it should. But all of the right pieces are here.

All good songs should feel like a journey. Once upon a time Perfume’s songs used to be. But this element is missing now. How you would feel at the start of a song was different you’ll feel by the end. Whereas now, there’s no difference for me. Perfume’s songs now start at one level and just stay there until the end, with no real shifts, meaningful senses of progression or something building. And this is also a problem with their music videos nowadays, but that’s a whole other post. Take “Chocolate Disco” and “One Room Disco” for example. They both start in a particular way and then there’s all of this magic which happens in the middle. Then two thirds of the way into the song, there’s more magic. The energy shifts, and it pushes and pulls you. And then the song concludes at the right moment and not a second sooner, and it feels wholly satisfying. The song felt like a journey. But there’s no sense of journey with “Sumikko Disco” at all. I think this may partly be why I prefer the Movie Version of the song, because the intro and outro provides some form of shift. But it still feels a little disconnected from the song itself and not in the cool ‘Didn’t see that coming’ kinda way as the intro to “One Room Disco” did. A motif which was used throughout the song to make it feel less disconnected, compared to the intro of the Move Version of “Sumikko Disco”, which feels tacked on.

Perfume – Sumikko Disco | Polydor Records / Universal Music

The more Nakata pushes Perfume’s sound into this space of having a bounce and being a bit funky, the more disconnected the sound and the vocals become. Because the more rhythm and bounce he puts into Perfume’s songs, the less that the straight, high-pitched, unemotive voices work for me. Perfume’s flow on songs feels different now, which changes the dynamic in a really cool way. The way Nocchi rides that beat in the first verse? OKAY BITCH. But Perfume’s actual voices still aren’t sounding how I feel they should to better sell the songs and sell themselves. The sound of “Sumikko Disco” has so much vibrance and life, but we’re not always getting that in the vocals. Some may say it’s intentional because Sumikko Garashi deals with a bunch of characters who have anxiety. But the way Perfume sing on this song is how they always woulda sung it regardless. If Perfume were able to sing closer to their natural voices and somebody was brought onboard to better produce and arrange their vocals, it would make such a difference and further push Perfume’s sound forward. It would also potentially fix the song structure conundrum, because Nakata would view Perfume’s vocals as a component in songs that he can work with for the arrangements. Nakata never seems to be creating Perfume’s songs with their voices in mind, which was always a problem in the past, because it made their material so interchangeable. Particularly circa 2009, where Nakata gave Perfume, Ami Suzuki and Meg the same sound and had them all sing in similar ways. And it was also a problem around 2015 when Perfume and Kyary’s songs became more interchangeable than they ever had been before.

One cool thing I will say about Perfume’s singing on “Sumikko Disco”, is that it is nice to hear each member get their own verses and sets of lines. “Sumikko Disco” is one of the first songs in a while where I’ve been very aware of a-chan, Nocchi and Kashiyuka’s individual voices, because they aren’t all just singing the whole song together, as has often been the case with quite a few of their singles over the past 5-6 years. My jaw damn near dropped when I heard Nocchi get a whole verse to herself. She is usually the one that gets short changed on songs, which was a really weird turn for her after Triangle, an album where she was the dominant vocal on a handful of songs.

We are also finally getting SOME harmonies. And it genuinely does sound like all three members of Perfume are singing in three different keys and even harmonising with themselves, as opposed to Nakata making a harmony by changing the keys of their vocals after the fact. I like this. But I still want more of Perfume’s vocals on songs. I want full harmonies. I want additional vocal layers. I want some ad-libs. I really want Perfume to take ownership of these songs to such a point that you wouldn’t prefer just listening to the instrumental, which I often do due to how little Perfume’s vocals contribute to songs and how they sometimes make them worse. And you also notice more of the intricacies in the music which the vocals hide, rather than the song being arranged in a balanced way to centre the vocals whilst also highlighting the arrangement and production of the song.

Perfume – Sumikko Disco | Polydor Records / Universal Music

I do like “Sumikko Disco”. It is a really good song. I cannot tell you how relieved I am that we didn’t end up with another “Mirai no Museum”. Nakata finally seems to have done away with that purely twinkly cute bullshit which (for better or worse) has become synonymous with Perfume over the years, and found a way to balance it with a sound which is genuinely cool and has a broader (and slightly older) appeal, without alienating any of Perfume’s fans. But it feels almost cruel that Nakata is giving Perfume songs where the sound is SO right and so close to being something great and everything it should be, but a few easily fixable things hold them back.