Single arts & tracklist: Perfume - Relax in the city / Pick me up

For Perfume's 21st single Relax in the city / Pick me up, fans have already drawn comparisons to their 13th single - double A-side release Laser beam / Kasuka na kaori and it's not difficult to see why. Whilst the "Relax in the city" and "Kasuka na kaori" connection is blatantly obvious. "Pick me up" isn't such a copy and paste job of "Laser beam", but instead looks like a cross between "Fushizen na girl" and "Glitter" with a touch of the "Sleeping beauty" intermission for their LEVEL3 4th tour in dome gig. If the song itself happens to be as good as any of the aforementioned, then we'll be in for a treat. Hopefully Perfume's choreography Mikiko will put them to work for the dance routine, because I'm not expecting anything noteworthy from "Relax in the city". Although I would love to be blindsighted and made to eat my words.

I've set myself up for pinning all hopes on "Pick me up", so if these girls roll out with "Pick me up" and it's some bullshit, I will have very little faith in their 5th studio album. Faith being something I lost by the sack load when Cling Cling dropped. I've not wholeheartedly loved a Perfume single since "Spending all my time".

1. Relax in the city
2. Pick me up
3. Toumei ningen
4. Relax in the city (Instrumental)
5. Pick me up (Instrumental)
6. Toumei ningen (Instrumental)

I really hope when the time comes for Perfume's 5th studio album to have its track list finalised, that somebody is as brutal as hell and leaves off some of the B-sides and even a couple of the A-sides. If all of the songs featured across "Sweet refrain", Cling cling and Relax in the city / Pick me up were to be featured then that would mean we have heard 9 songs off of the album already, and I would not care one bit if all 9 of these songs didn't make the cut. Even our beloved "Display", unless it got album mixed to high heaven, because the original version is far too sparse and way too repetitive. The same goes for "Hold your hand". I've grown to really like the song ever since the girls started performing it, but it sounds too similar to "Sweet refrain". In fact, I wouldn't mind if one song or the other got cut. I don't feel particularly strong about one song over the other.

This era hasn't been all that great. The singles have been underwhelming and in each and every case the songs have only caught traction once the girls have performed them live. This is great on one hand because it goes to show how important the visual and choreography element is to Perfume as a whole. But the songs need to be strong enough to stand on their own, and there hasn't been one song in the past two single releases from Perfume which has done - at least not for me. There has also been a real lack of distinctness in the sound of the singles Perfume has released since "Sweet refrain"; almost as though Nakata doesn't know what Perfume's sound should be. I for one am tired of the Chipmunk vocals. I could have been on board with "Cling Cling" and "Hold your hand" if the girls were allowed to sing in their normal voices or if Nakata had taken both songs down a key or two. But the vocals took what were two great pieces of music and shitted on them. Originally, I thought Nakata was a general rut. But Pamyu Pamyu's singles have been continually decent, and Capsule's Wave runner is a much stronger and more consistent album than I thought it would be. So what exactly the hell is going on with him in regards to Perfume?