Random J Playlist: Perfume – Nebula Romance: Episode 1 Tour (The Setlist it Should Have)

Perfume will be kicking off their tour Nebula Romance: Episode 1 Tour at the end of December. And given how different, interesting, brand new, and fresh Perfume have been for everything concerning Nebula Romance: Part 1, I want to believe this will extend to the tour setlist. But I also refuse to get my hopes up. So I am fully expecting the tour setlist to be a type of mess.

Now, you may be wondering ‘Why is he switching between Nebula Romance: Part 1 and Nebula Romance: Episode 1?’. This is because Nebula Romance: Part 1 is the title of the album and Nebula Romance: Episode 1 is the name of its tour. But watch me still get them confused and mix them up.

Much like Perfume’s 2009 album Triangle, Nebula Romance: Part 1 is an album with a core sound and vibe, which is pretty consistent throughout. And much like Triangle, Nebula Romance: Part 1 is 80s as hell. So an obvious choice for the Nebula Romance: Episode 1 Tour setlist, would be to just throw a whole bunch of Triangle songs in that bitch, with a couple of the 80s cuts from JPN and LEVEL3. But one thing about Team Perfume, is that their album tour setlists tend to be…not great. The setlist for the Plasma Tour was a shambles. Looking back on the Plasma album, it was also a little bit of a shambles — something which was largely overlooked by many of us, due to how glad we were to hear that Perfume’s music was back on form. But even so, there was a clear vibe that Plasma had, or that it was going for, which got completely lost in the tour setlist. It also got lost in the staging and the production choices. But that’s a whole other post, which I’ve already written.

Perfume’s tour setlists are always iffy. Not only do Team Perfume tend to pick songs which don’t make sense together, but the order of the songs is also off. There is no sense of [turns and looks into the camera] flow. And for a tour for an album which is about this whole world with its own story, the setlist needs to make sense, flow and feel connected. The connected part is really key for Perfume, which makes song choices and running orders for setlists even more vital. Given that Team Perfume don’t fuck with the arrangements of their songs for tours, they can’t make songs connect and mash them up in ways that many other artists would generally do. Well, they could. But Team Perfume just chooses not to. So they have to just work with the songs as they are. Greater consideration of the setlist would also make the tour feel a bit more unique amongst Perfume’s tours, in the same way that Nebula Romance: Part 1 is unique in Perfume’s discography.

The more I listen to Nebula Romance: Part 1, the more I wonder if Perfume’s producer Yasutaka Nakata started to form an idea for it during Plasma. Because you could very easily put some of the Plasma songs on Nebula Romance: Part 1, and they’d fit. It’s almost a shame in a way, because the Plasma intro would have been so perfect for Nebula Romance: Part 1. Which makes me wonder if Team Perfume will include songs from Plasma in the setlist. They should. But “Polygon Wave” and “Spinning World” should be off the table. I adore “Spinning World”. But it is such a Plasma-centric song. It is the poster child for Plasma and it was also on the Code of Perfume Tour setlist. It needs a break. Save it for the non album tours, because Perfume’s non album tours need more songs from later in Perfume’s discography.

All this to say, that I tried my hand at making a setlist that I think would work for this tour — taking into account some form of narrative and theme, which flows from start to finish.

⏯️ Listen to ‘Nebula Romance: Episode 1 Tour (The Setlist it Should Have)’: 🔴 YouTube | YouTube Music | 🟢 Spotify

I had my consideration hat on when I put this playlist together. Taking into consideration that Perfume’s album tours tend to have pretty short setlists, so I had to keep it tight. That there needed to be a slow section, where Perfume can relax a little, so they aren’t dancing full out for an hour solid. And trying to balance centring Nebula Romance: Part 1, but also sprinkling in moments from other albums. But not so much that it pulls focus. Which is actually hard to do, given that Nebula Romance: Part 1 is such a short album with very short songs. Even when I look at my setlist, I think ‘It’s too top heavy’. But there’s no other way I can think of it working.

And, yes. I know starting the tour off with “Jikukka” may seem like a strange choice, but I think they should do it. It really would work as a dramatic ass opener. I kinda wish the album opened with it too.

There is a high likelihood I’mma keep changing and reordering songs in this playlist. Even as I post this, I’m unsure about it.