Revisiting Perfume’s first studio album, ‘Game’

I consider myself a Perfume fan. But I’m not gonna sit here and act like I got them and liked them from the very start. And fans may view what I’m about to say as blasphemous — I wasn’t a fan of Game the first time around.

When I first reviewed Game, I was pretty unenthusiastic about it. Although the songs from the album I did like back then, are still my favourites now. So, at the very least I knew what was what when it came to the good songs and could acknowledge that they were…good. Great, in fact. But Game didn’t click for me until around the time of JPN. And I know this sounds weird, given that the two albums couldn’t be further apart in terms of approach. And Perfume fans who happen to be reading this are gonna be like ‘Bitch, huh?’ given how much dislike there is for JPN in the #Prfm fandom. But hear me out.

What made me strap in for JPN was that I was experiencing the singles as they were releasing, and the totality of each of them. And it was here that I realised that Perfume wasn’t just about the music. To appreciate Perfume and to really get what they’re about, you have to experience the package of Perfume — songs, music video and performance, altogether. And with Game, I had piecemealed the package by only listening to the album. So upon having this realisation during JPN, I jumped back and immersed myself in everything Game — poring over as many of its music videos and performances as I could find, and it recontextualised Game for me. Taking what I thought was an okay album to a really good one, which I grew to adore. And as time has gone on, Game continues to hold in terms of quality and significance.

In this day and age, music is consumed through YouTube, social media and streaming platforms — where it’s easier to see snapshots of who a music act is and find entrances to the rabbit holes. And we are also in the era of YouTubers making the rabbit hole videos for us. But back when I first listened to Game, the landscape was very different. Perfume didn’t have a YouTube channel. Back then, YouTube wasn’t even close to what it is now. Performances weren’t easy to come by on any site or platform. So there was already a barrier to access for me, which didn’t begin to fall until circa 2012 after the release of JPN — coinciding with the shift where music videos and televised performances did become easier to come by, and Perfume themselves started an official YouTube channel.

But Game isn’t a perfect album though. And some of the issues that I feel are prevalent in Perfume’s music now, stem from this album in some form or other — just as much as the strengths of this album are also a part of what has brought Perfume’s music back around since 2022.

Game doesn’t feel like AN ALBUM. It feels like a collection of songs, which was probably part of the carry over from Perfume Complete Best. So, from the start there seemed to be less ‘Let’s try and work on this amazing body of work’ and more of ‘Let’s just pull some songs together that can work as singles and be staples for performances’. Given that Japanese studio albums frequently end up as a collection of songs due to them featuring about 8 singles recorded as individual singles and not part of an album, Game was likely always going to end up this way regardless. And it wouldn’t have mattered too much anyway, because the album still would have said little about who Perfume actually was. Even when you resequence the album to feel more like an top to bottom album, it still only tells you part of the story of Perfume.

This sense of ‘Let’s just create a collection of songs’ is something which I think has had a negative impact on Perfume’s music over the years. Because the music is often treated as a component to something else, and not a thing which is always intended to stand on its own. This is what also results in some of Perfume’s songs having the structures that they do these days. And why the album mixes never fit the albums, because they are pretty much tour mixes. Every song seems to be crafted with a notion of ‘This’ll work well when they do it live’ or ‘This’ll hit in a music video’ or ‘This’ll be a nice jingle for a commercial’, rather than a regard for if the song will work on its own and as part of an album. Perfume albums are not created to be bodies of work, but rather soundtracks to a show, which often results in Perfume’s album related tours never being that great, because the album itself isn’t a package which tells any sort of story or has any point of view. There is never a narrative with Perfume’s albums, which is weird for a group who do have a narrative which has been consistent in their live shows since the beginning — shows that the songs are geared towards. And this is part of what confused me about Game. As I was listening to it, I could hear there was some form of narrative in the sound. That there was something tucked away. There was some point of view that the album producer Nakata Yasutaka had. And a point of view that Perfume had. But it wasn’t fully coming together on the album, because the performances the songs seemed to be made for were the threads that tied it all together.

So, why does Game still manage to work and hold in a way some of Perfume’s other albums don’t? Especially when there is Triangle, the only Perfume album which actually does feel like it was crafted as a body of work, but isn’t treated with the same reverence as Game?

Part of it is the time at which the album was released. Game is an album which simultaneously manages to sound of the time, yet timeless. But also a bit displaced. Game coulda been released in the 80s, 90s or now and it would work and fit. But it would also feel out of time. Game is also a clusterfuck, but in an exciting way that Cosmic Explorer thought it was. Game is edgy, but it’s cute. It’s fun, but it’s dark. It’s pop, but it’s underground club. It’s inviting, but it’s menacing. It’s innocent, but it’s sexy. It’s young, but it’s grown. It’s very Japanese, but it’s also very Euro-centric. It adheres to J-pop, but also disregards it. Game was full of contrasts. Perfume being the act to release some of these songs was already a concept which I think intrigued people, because you would never look at their image and think their music would sound the way it did. Or that they would perform it the way they did and continue to. But again, this visual contrast is only one which applies if you are seeing the full Perfume package, which includes the music videos and the performances.

Game manages to intersect in so many ways without feeling like it’s trying to. And in doing this, Game is something that so few of Perfume’s albums are. It’s cool. I could never say that I think JPN, LEVEL3 (as much as I like it), Cosmic Explorer and Future Pop are cool sounding albums. Game struck a balance when it came to merging cute with cool. There were songs on Game which had these bubble-gum melodies, but then these nasty clubby techno basslines. And then you had a song like “Polyrhythm” which fuses cuteness with cool and then has this whole music theory element of an actual polyrhythm woven into its structure. And it’s no coincidence that the one Perfume album which sounds like it’s pulling from Game is also a cool sounding album: Plasma. And that the song which signalled the shift back to being cool sounded like “Polyrhythm”.

Also, Game was Perfume’s first studio album. So there was no expectation. There wasn’t a thing they were known for at large by this point. So even with the fanbase they had and Perfume Complete Best out, they could still redefine what Perfume was. And Nakata was a guy in his twenties, in his ‘Make the shit sound cool’ Samantha Thavasa. Everything Nakata was putting out during this time was with the intent of sounding cool on the radio, cool in the clubs and cool during performances, but doing it in a slightly rebellious way. Because which other record label was faxing out PO numbers to electronic / techno-pop producers to helm an entire album for a girl group?

One of the cool things about Game is how well the music on it still holds, which is one of the great things about Nakata Yasutaka striving for cool, whilst fucking with ‘What qualifies as cool in pop in this day and age?’ and not leaning into trends. Something I feel “Polyrhythm” is a perfect storm of. But as great as Game still sounds to this day, it acts as a reminder to me of how Perfume’s music hasn’t come far enough since it. As much as I like Plasma, it doesn’t push Perfume’s sound far enough. And it’s really the album we should have gotten after LEVEL3, if anything. And whilst Plasma featuring some throwback moments to Game is nice, Perfume should have been clear of the shadow of Game by this point.

Game is great. But it’s not an album which is so untouchable that Perfume and Nakata could never top it. Which is why I have been so frustrated over the years with some of Nakata’s choices for Perfume’s music. But Game is an album that I feel Perfume and Nakata should seriously look back on. Not with the intent of recreating it. But to get an understanding of why that album worked and how they can create something which acts as an evolution of it, as opposed to just nods to and offshoots of it — which is part of where I feel Triangle may have dropped the ball, especially with it releasing soon after.

I wasn’t sold on this shit at first, but now look at me. Playing the damn Game. So I guess it did what it needed to eventually.