Single Review: Perfume – The Light

Everything Perfume has released post P Cubed has been giving off an air of ‘Cosmic Explorer was a mistake’. It’s probably unintentional, and simply a case of producer Nakata Yasutaka’s creativity and tastes over the past couple of years aligning in a way which matches where Perfume’s sound should be. But, irregardless—it feels like course correction and re-dos, and “The Light” really cements this for me.

Perfume’s digital single “The Light” sounds like the long lost sister to “Cosmic Explorer”, which is as much of a surprise as it isn’t. Perfume’s sound has been sat pretty firmly in the 80s since the release of “Time Warp”. At a push, you could even say “Saisei”. Or P Cubed’s “Challenger”. So this pop rock type sound was somewhat of an inevitability—especially in the wake of “Moon”.

Perfume songs with a pop rock vibe is something I’ve wanted for quite some time. Not only does it suit Perfume, but makes you partly remember one of the things which defined them—the contrast between their image and their sound, and how it completed fucked with expectations. This contrasting, edgier sound that we were introduced to with Game’s “Game” and then experienced again with Triangle’s “Edge” should have been a constant in Perfume’s sound. And I guess you could argue that it has been, but with the rock edge being replaced with a dance one—“Party Maker”, “Story” and “Fusion” all being the “Game” or “Triangle” of their respective albums. But still, it was a shame that the pop rock edge was jettisoned for JPN and LEVEL3—when it would’ve made sense for an album like LEVEL3 to have had a song with such a vibe. So it’s cool to hear this 80s pop rock sound with an [turns and looks into the camera] edge back in the fold again. And at the same time as Nocchi’s feature on a Sheena Ringo song, no less.

For how terrible an album Cosmic Explorer was, the album title track was an immediate highlight for how different and refreshing it was. Especially after how all over the place the singles leading up to the release of the album were. And you’d think as a result of it being the album title track, that it would have informed the sound of some of Cosmic Explorer’s album cuts in some way. No bitch. It was always strange to me that there was no other song on the album to complement it. But that’s a whole other post, and one which will come in due course, as I have a theory about Cosmic Explorer and how it ended up being what it was.

“Cosmic Explorer” touched on a thread which was never pulled, and I just came to accept that this is part of how Nakata Yasutaka operates. Sometimes he’ll deliver a sound which works really well and signals a new direction in which Perfume’s sound should go in, just for him to hard turn and never revisit that shit again. But whether it’s a coincidence or a deliberate effort to revisit, Nakata has circled back to “Cosmic Explorer” for “The Light”, and it’s a bit of a glorious moment. Because not only does it feel like a surprise, but it also happens to be a really good song, which is part of a string of what have been some really cool sounding singles. I don’t think we’ve had a string of singles sound this good from Perfume since JPN.

But a good Perfume song these days usually comes with a caveat. And lo and behold, once again, a good Perfume song is let down by a lackadaisical structure and arrangement, which renders the song sounding incomplete. I am going to record myself saying this, upload it to YouTube as a video, and just embed it in every Perfume music review, because I have been saying this for every Perfume music review for the past few years now, because it is a recurring problem with these. Ever since “Tokyo Girl”, Perfume’s songs have just had these really flat structures and arrangements.

“The Light” sounds unfinished to me. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Nakata just had to piece the shit together because Perfume said ‘We wanna perform it for our gig in Honk Kong’. But this would be giving Nakata unearned leeway, because it wouldn’t explain years of him making songs in this fashion. This is just how he approaches a lot of his songs now.

The intro on “The Light” sounds like a placeholder and I can absolutely see it changing for the album mix. This song having no bridge section or middle 8 is crazy. You think the song is building up to something, just for the song to then end. And this is a general vibe that a lot of Perfume’s songs tend to have now. Songs with a great sound and melody, but with a structure and arrangement which doesn’t go anywhere. The songs start and then they end, and nothing is really happening in-between. There is no journey with these songs. Just this really flat listening experience. With “Time Warp”, “Flow”, “Moon” and “Summiko Disco”, it was the exact same thing. Nakata’s songs go from 0 to 7 by the time the first chorus hits, then they stay at a 7 and just…end. This isn’t how it used to be with Perfume’s songs. Even though they were always simple in structure, they felt like journeys. They had a beginning, a middle and an end. Little flourishes and touches which would be introduced or re-introduced at specific parts of each song. Just think of songs like “Polyrhythm”, “Chocolate Disco”, “One Room Disco”, “Glitter”. Even a song like “Spending All My Time” which was repetitious as hell. These songs all had arcs of some sort. They built towards something. The energy of the songs was never flat. They took you on journeys which felt complete. This journeyless feeling that Perfume’s songs have nowadays can also be said for their music videos. The energy doesn’t shift. There’s just this flatness. It’s like watching a live wallpaper with the same one animation cycle for three minutes.

It’s truly a shame that Perfume’s songs are so flat at a time when their sound is in a good place which feels right for them. “Moon”, “Sumikko Disco” and “The Light” all have great sounds. But the songs don’t go anywhere, despite each of them having really obvious places in which their arrangements should go. Even I managed to cut together an extended mix for “Moon” which gave the song some form of journey and build. I put in a longer intro. I let the chorus repeat a couple more times. I gave the song a middle 8. I threw in a key change. I gave the song an outro. These were such obvious things to me, and all things I would suggest for “The Light” too.

It’s really weird to me that Nakata and Perfume played back “The Light” and said ‘This is fine’, when it so clearly needed a bridge section or a middle 8 and some form of awesome breakdown with a keytar solo and talk box vocals. Nakata should album mix the shit out of “The Light”, but he won’t. And if he does, he won’t add the things to the song that it actually needs. And it’s a shame. Because as per Perfume’s last couple of singles, “The Light” has the potential to be amazing and a standout song in Perfume’s discography. All of the right elements are there, they just aren’t being arranged, pushed and pulled in the ways in which they should be. And this has been too common a theme with Perfume’s music for too long now.