Album Review: Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1

Sometimes you’ve gotta be careful what you wish for.

Upon hearing Capsule’s 2022 album Metro Pulse, an initial thought I’d had was how much I wished some of the songs had gone to Perfume, because I found the sound of Metro Pulse more interesting than that of Perfume’s 2022 album Plasma and more in line of where Perfume’s sound should’ve been at that point. Producer Yasutaka Nakata clearly seemed to feel the same way. Because Perfume’s follow up to Plasma, Nebula Romance: Part 1, is basically Metro Pulse 2. But something else which Metro Pulse had over Plasma, was that it felt far more cohesive as an album. Like, an ALBUM album. Considerately sequenced from top to bottom. A body of work. Nakata approached Metro Pulse with a theme and a clear idea of how he wanted it to sound as an album. Although Capsule albums have always felt cohesive and followed through on a theme in ways that Perfume’s albums rarely do — probably due to Capsule not being big on singles the way Perfume has always been. And lo and behold, Nebula Romance: Part 1 wasn’t an album preceded with a string of singles as Perfume albums usually are. And guess what? Nebula Romance: Part 1 feels like a body of work in a way a Perfume album hasn’t done since their 2009 album Triangle, which was more of a concept album than this is, but we’ll get to that.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

As much as the music on Plasma was an improvement over what ended up on Cosmic Explorer and Future Pop, it didn’t really feel like a body of work. The Polygon Wave EP felt like a companion piece to the Perfume Live [Polygon Wave] shows. But near enough the whole thing got shoved onto Plasma. “Mawaru Kagami” felt like a song which wasn’t intended to be a single or feature on an album, yet it ended up on Plasma. And the other songs felt like a case of tie-in songs and just filling out the tracklist to make up ‘an album’. And because Nakata was on his 80s shit at the time, that ended up being folded into the album too. Plasma was a bit of a mess. A mess with a couple of fantastic songs. But still a bit of a mess and an instance of songs which were cobbled together to make up an album. So it’s nice that Nebula Romance: Part 1 feels like an actual album which was intended to be the album that it is.

However. Just as Plasma felt close to the type of album we should’ve gotten as a follow-up to Perfume’s 2013 album LEVEL3, Nebula Romance: Part 1 feels like the album that Plasma should have been. Also, Nebula Romance: Part 1 is quite literally a re-do of Cosmic Explorer. This isn’t an inherently bad thing. I quite like the idea of acts looking back and realising they may have squandered a theme and concept and deciding to do it again, but doing it properly. But there is still this sense of Perfume being a bit stuck as opposed to truly moving forward. But credit where it’s due, we do get some forward momentum with Nebula Romance: Part 1. And it’s a bigger jump forward than Plasma was. We’ve not had a Perfume album feel like this much of a jump forward since LEVEL3.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

Whilst Nebula Romance: Part 1 does feel far more like a body of work than most of Perfume’s other albums, it still suffers from a couple of things which have become unfortunate themes with Perfume’s music and albums for the past 7 years.

Sequencing. Nebula Romance: Part 1 features some odd sequencing choices, as Perfume albums almost always do. Raggedy album sequencing is as much of a Perfume staple as the ugly stage outfits. “Starlight Dreams” is an album highlight. I’d even go as far as to rank it as one of Perfume’s best songs. But it’s oddly sandwiched between “Cosmic Treat” and “Ima Ima Ima”, and it’s too close to the top of the album. “Starlight Dreams” is not a track 4 kinda song on an album like this. It’s more of a track 7 kinda song. Fellow mid-tempo “Jikuuka” is a great song. But it’s sandwiched between two of the albums’ most uptempo songs, “Time Capsule” and “Mobius”. And whilst it makes sense thematically to have a trio of songs sequenced together which reference time — “Jikuuka” translates to ‘Space-Time Flower’ and “Mobius” is derived from a möbius strip, which represents the non-linearity of time — it doesn’t make sense sonically. “Jikuuka” would have made for a great dramatic album opener, and also an unexpected one. But with where “Jikuuka” is currently placed on the album, it needed another mid-tempo or slow song to precede it. As much as Perfume are known for their music being uptempo, their mid-tempos are highlights and some of my favourite songs of theirs. “Macaroni”, “I Still Love You”, “575”, “Furikaeru to Iru yo”, “Dream Land”, “Drive’n the Rain” — fantastic songs. And Nakata has been on a run of really great 80s sounding mid-tempos for Capsule and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu too, with “Natsuiro Flower” and “Wonderland”, both of which are highlights on Candy Racer and Metro Pulse respectively. So I would have been very okay with Nebula Romance: Part 1 featuring an extra mid-tempo or two to sit alongside “Starlight Dreams” and “Jikuuka” and make them work better within the album to help it flow better.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

But there is generally a sense that this album is missing something to better tie each of the songs together, to create a tighter listening experience. Nebula Romance: Part 1 doesn’t feature an intro, which is strange, because this is the one Perfume album I think really needed one. “Plasma” honestly would have been so perfect for this album. Or an album mix of “The Light” which had a longer intro to act as the album intro would have also sufficed. As reassuring as Plasma was that Nakata was getting his shit together and the path it paved for Nebula Romance: Part 1, there are songs on that album which would have worked so much better here. “Plasma” and “Drive’n the Rain” are quite literally the songs this album needed to give it an intro and something to work alongside either “Starlight Dreams” and “Jikuuka”.

As good as each of the songs on Nebula Romance: Part 1 are, I don’t fully buy them all being part of the same ‘story’. Or that there is this particular narrative which overarcs them. Triangle is still Perfume’s most album-like album, where every song feels connected. Not just sonically, but thematically. “Take Off”. “Night Flight”. “Speed of Sound”. “Zero Gravity”. There are regular anchors to some form of aviation, and that entire album has a sound which every song sits within. Where-as with Nebula Romance: Part 1, there are a couple of songs which kinda pull me out of the 80s Sci-Fi movie fantasy that the album is trying to sell me on. “Love Cloud”, “Sumikko Disco”, “Morning Cruising” and “Time Capsule” are all good songs, but something about them doesn’t quite fit. Nakata seems to have pitched Nebula Romance: Part 1 as a Sci-Fi movie score / soundtrack of sorts, but it sounds like a hybrid of an RPG soundtrack and an 80s anime Sci-Fi soundtrack. “Love Cloud”, “Morning Cruising” and “Time Capsule” sound more Persona than Voltron.

Perhaps having transitions between the songs and having the album run as one continuous thing would have helped better sell the songs being part of a story and transporting listeners into the world Nakata saw in his head, because it doesn’t fully translate into every song or the album as a whole. To me, it feels like there’s the sound of the songs, what the songs are about and then Perfume’s creative team trying to build a narrative with things which are in the songs…kind of — i.e. the city in the “Cosmic Treat” video being called “The Light”. But the topics of the songs, the album title and the story behind the “Cosmic Treat” video don’t fully marry up. Each thing feels like it’s only part of something, but even together they still don’t fully make a whole. We’ll come back to all this. But back to song transitions, Nebula Romance: Part 1 featuring them would have forced Nakata to be conscious of the sequencing, because the order of the songs would have to make sense for the transitions to work properly. I know it’s long been a Nakata and Perfume signature for songs to just end, with no fade outs or transitions. But seeing as both Nakata and Perfume seem to be in this different creative space and approaching this album differently, I think the same should have been applied to the presentation of the songs as part of an album. Make versions of the songs which end for Perfume to perform on TV shows and on tours. But have the songs transition into one another on the album.

That sound you hear? That’s a record skipping due to a broken record. Because here I am once again, talking about how the song structures feel incomplete.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

Something (else) which impacts the lack of fullness and roundedness of this album is the thing that I have been banging on about with Perfume’s music for years now. The song structures. They are still lacking y’all. The songs on Nebula Romance: Part 1 have such great sounds, but the song structures leave a lot to be desired. It’s either a case of a song just starting and then ending with no real energy shifts (“The Light”, “Sumikko Disco”) or a song sounding like it needed a bridge, middle eight or a breakdown (“Cosmic Treat” and “Starlight Dreams”) or the structure just needing a few tweaks to make it feel tighter.

“The Light” and “Sumikko Disco” are way too flat. There are no peaks in the song, which “The Light” really needed to help better lift the hook. And “Sumikko Disco” just sounds way too drab after a while for a song about a disco. Just compare it to the likes of “Chocolate Disco” and “One Room Disco” — both of which feel like bottled energy which is set free by the end. Then there’s the flat soda that is “Sumikko Disco”.

When I first listened to the Nebula Romance: Part 1 preview, “Cosmic Treat” was a standout for me. And it still is, purely off the strength of the chorus and the song being a YMO sounding-ass disco song — a style of song I have wanted from Perfume for SO long. But “Cosmic Treat” is still lacking. The intro and outro sound as though Nakata didn’t know how to open and close out the song. And there being no bridge or middle eight is really weird. “Cosmic Treat” has absolutely no build or sense of progression. So when the climax of the electric guitars hits during the second run of the chorus, it feels like it comes out of nowhere and too early in the song. And this ‘buildless climax outta nowhere’ thing was a problem with “Flow”, “Hate no Bito” and “Mawaru Kagami” on Plasma. “Starlight Dreams” also suffers from not featuring a bridge, an additional verse, a saxophone solo or some form of switch — some of which Nakata did for Metro Pulse’s similarly sexy and vibey “Wonderland”, which wasn’t even three minutes long. “Starlight Dreams” just ends whilst you’re sitting there in your panites and sheer robe with your cigarette in your hand, still in the midst of the 80s penthouse fantasy. “Cosmic Treat” and “Starlight Dreams” paint such vivid pictures and set such clear moods, but neither song lets you relish in them long enough. The same can be said for “Ima Ima Ima”, which really sells the Sci-Fi concept of the album. But despite being three and a half minutes long, it still feels shy of an additional 30 seconds of music toward the end.

With “Mobius”, the pieces are there, they’re just in the wrong order. The section when the music drops out during the chorus at 1:42 should have come later in the song. The key change should have come in earlier. There needed to be a big-ass guitar solo to break up what felt like Nakata trying for dear life to drag the song out for three minutes and 43 seconds. The run-up to the outro needed to be a little longer and maybe introduce a slightly different melody. I really like the sound of “Mobius” and the energy of it. It’s a great song to end the album and will make for a great encore for the tour. But every time I listen to it, I’m like ‘Something is off and I need more’ and this isn’t something I felt with songs on Game, Triangle, JPN or LEVEL3. Even with a song as repetitive as “Spending All My Time”, it still felt full and complete. There was a beginning, a middle, an end and shifts in energy which occurred throughout the song. It’s like Nakata has lost a sense of where certain elements of a song should sit, how the energy should shift and what the structure needs to be. It was the exact same thing with “Moon”. It’s like ‘Really? This is it!?’. Listen to my Extended Mixes of “Moon” and “Cosmic Treat” for a better sense of what I mean when it comes to the structures not really working and more of what the songs needed. Hopefully it’ll illustrate my points better. There is just a lack of completeness when it comes to some of Perfume’s songs these days. And with Nebula Romance: Part 1 it can result in either feeling like you’re just being rushed from song to song or that there isn’t enough energy at points.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

The vocals. Now. I’ve long had an issue with Perfume’s vocals on their songs. And how I feel about them has shifted as time has gone on. First there was too much autotune and vocal processing. Then it was the style of singing. Then it was the lack of vocal production and arrangements. And now Nebula Romance: Part 1 opens new cans of worms as well as old ones.

Nebula Romance: Part 1 does feature Perfume singing differently to how they usually do. Perfume’s vocals are far more of a focus on this album than they have been before. We get Perfume singing in a far less linear fashion. They give us vibrato. We get some harmonies and layering on songs. And Perfume ride the beats with more gusto, harkening back to songs like “1mm”. But Nebula Romance: Part 1 further highlights something I had first noticed on LEVEL3, which is far more glaring here — the way in which songs get divided up between a-chan, Kashiyuka and Nocchi. After Triangle and the retiring of the autotune, Nakata developed a very clear preference for a-chan and Kashiyuka’s voices, which resulted in Nocchi getting sidelined. Even on sections of songs where Nocchi’s voice would be better suited, a-chan or Kashiyuka will end up singing them instead. Regardless of Nakata’s preferences, Perfume is a group of three. So they should each get their time to shine on songs equally. And it’s not like Nocchi can’t sing. But when she’s made to sing in the way Nakata has had her singing for the past 20+ years, she sounds like she can’t sing. Her featuring on Sheena Ringo’s “Hatsu K.O. Gachi” was a mind blowing moment for even long term Perfume fans, who had no idea that how Nocchi sings on Perfume songs is not her natural singing style.

Part of Nakata’s job as Perfume’s producer is to work with them on their vocals to get them to sound the best they can on songs. And if he can’t do that, then somebody needs to be brought in that can. Whilst Nebula Romance: Part 1 does feature some welcomed changes to how Perfume sing, it’s still miles away from how Perfume should be singing, especially after 20 years. ESPECIALLY when they were singing better in their earlier years. It feels like a regression. And no matter how much Nakata delivers with the music and instrumentation of a song, it will always be held back by Perfume singing it largely the way in which they always have.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

I really wish that more of an effort was made to highlight individual members’ voices and what an instrument Perfume’s voices can be on a song and what they can add when they are allowed to sing closer to their natural voices and in harmonies. There are some songs where there is a notable effort to do these things, such as “Cosmic Treat”, “Sumikko Disco” and “Starlight Dreams”. But for the most part, a lot of the songs just have Perfume all singing together, in the same key, the same way, in unison. And as a result, a-chan’s voice ends up being the most dominant, which is also because of how Nakata mixes it — a-chan’s vocals are always in the centre and sounding the fullest, where-as Nocchi’s and Kashiyuka’s vocals are usually panned off slightly to the left or the right. You can hear this clearest on “Cosmic Treat”. So it doesn’t always sound like you are listening to three voices on a song. It just sounds like you’re listening to layers of a-chan’s vocals. There are occasions when other members do come through when all three sing together. Keyshiyuka Cole is the most prominent vocal on “Ima Ima Ima” and Nocchina Aguilera can be heard very clearly on “Mobius”. But on every other song, aretha-chan Franklin is the Beyoncé of the group.

There is just so much room for Perfume’s vocals to deliver more. And once again, the way in which they sing and Nakata’s lack of effort to really push Perfume’s vocals stops songs from being as great as they could be. And it’s more noticeable with this album than the others, because the style of songs require a different style of vocal performance and production than Perfume songs usually do. They require more character, more punch and a different level of musicality. And Perfume give some of these things, but not enough. And it’s frustrating when you know that Perfume can give these things, but are being made not to.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

Arrangements and structures aside, the production on this album is solid, as you’d expect from Nakata. You can tell he’s having fun in this 80s space that he’s been in for the past few years. There was a period in Nakata’s career where his work wasn’t great and was void of the magic that made many of us fall for his music in the first place. It was almost like Nakata was making a conscious effort to divorce himself from his circa 2007 production style and was running from doing the types of music that people wanted, which happened to be his signature sound. But on Nebula Romance: Part 1, Nakata seems to have stopped running. This album runs a gamut of some of Nakata’s popular sounds, with some new ones thrown in for measure, and you can hear that Nakata is having fun again and that he’s in a creative groove. The songs on Nebula Romance: Part 1 have an energy that Perfume’s songs haven’t had in so long. And I think that’s why Plasma to me also felt somewhat off. Because that sense of fun and warmth was so present on Metro Pulse and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s Candy Racer, but it wasn’t quite there in Plasma. But it’s present in Nebula Romance: Part 1. And thankfully, this album has none of those cutesy-ass songs which became far too commonplace on Perfume albums. There is none of that “Mirai no Museum”, “Baby Face”, “Everyday” or “Hate no Bito” bullshit here.

Whilst Nakata does show his knowledge of 80s pop and disco and ticks enough of the right boxes, I do wish that he had committed more to the tropes of the genres. I wish “Cosmic Treat” had leaned even further into disco and given us a slow and sensual intro, some horns, some strings, some hand claps and Nile Rodgers style guitar riffs. I wish “The Light” had given us a bridge with a rockin’ electric guitar solo, some crazy drum fills and a chorus sounding like it was being sung by a massive group of people. I wish “Starlight Dreams” had a saxophone solo.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

The songwriting on Nebula Romance: Part 1 leaves a lot to be desired. Moreso given the PR push of this being a ‘concept’ album. The Sci-Fi narrative thing doesn’t fly the way it should have or how some fans think it does. Every song on this album is about the same thing Nakata has always written songs about for Perfume. Triangle had a song called “Zero Gravity”. JPN had a song called “Laser Beam”. Cosmic Explorer had a song called “Cosmic Explorer”. Perfume has sung songs about falling in love, having a fear of falling in love and driving vehicles before. So nothing about the lyrics of these songs is new. The ‘concept’ is really just the way the album has been visually packaged and the story we got in the “Cosmic Treat” music video, which is also the story for the album, despite close to nothing of it being referenced in the songs. And for anybody who is about to say ‘But what about “Ima Ima Ima” tho? It references the plot of the “Cosmic Treat” video’. Perfume doing the whole ‘We are androids, we are creations’ schtick has been a thing since the very beginning — more so visually than musically. But still, it has long been their thing. So “Ima Ima Ima” doesn’t feel any different or as though it’s this huge narrative swing for a Perfume song. If anything, “Ima Ima Ima” stands out lyrically compared to every other song. At a stretch, I’d say the lyrics make more sense in the context of Perfume’s Disco-Graphy exhibit and the specific exhibit which featured “Ima Ima Ima” than it does what we saw in the music video for “Cosmic Treat”.

The thing that kinda fucks up ‘the concept’ of it all is actually the “Cosmic Treat” video and the ‘story’ explained in the album inlay. Because most of the songs on the album are about romanticising the past, love from a distance and wondering if your feelings will reach somebody who is far away. So Nebula Romance as an album title makes sense. It’s the inclusion of everything else in the branding of the album which creates a bit of a disconnect.

Lemme just put it like this. If you were listening to Nebula Romance: Part 1 without having read anything about it and knowing nothing about what’s in the physical album inlay, you would not think that this album was a concept album with any type of overarching story or narrative attached to it. The Polygon Wave EP and Metro Pulse were more of concept albums than Nebula Romance: Part 1 is, because all of the songs on each were geared toward a very particular sound and specific subject matter. This is not the case here and I kinda wish it was. You could give this album a completely different title, with a completely different cover and give “Cosmic Treat” a completely different video and it wouldn’t change the framing of the songs in the slightest. So many of the Sci-Fi aspects in the lyrics of the songs are generic and tangential. So I really hope this is something which is addressed and taken on board for Nebula Romance: Part 2. If you’re going to do a concept album, THEN DO A CONCEPT ALBUM. It’s not like Nakata doesn’t know how to. Most of Capsule’s albums are concept albums.

Nebula Romance: Part 1 isn’t actually a concept album at all. Which is fine. But it shouldn’t have been framed as such.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

Nakata was SO on the right track to making Nebula Romance: Part 1 an amazing album, but he just didn’t go all the way or far enough for it to be. But after Perfume’s last couple of albums, it’s nice to have a Perfume album which is fun, feels like a step forward for the group musically and that Team Perfume are actually awake at the wheel. It’s also nice to hear that Nebula Romance: Part 1 follows through on a lot of the things Plasma kinda hinted at sonically. In all honesty, I feel like Nakata was probably forming ideas for Nebula Romance: Part 1 whilst he was working on the album cuts for Plasma, because there is some very clear overlap. In fact. The same way that I don’t think there was originally a plan for Perfume to release Cosmic Explorer as a studio album, I don’t think there was originally an intention for Plasma to be a studio album. But that’s a whole other post. Because I do think Plasma dilutes the impact of Nebula Romance: Part 1 ever so slightly, and I can’t shake the feeling that part of Nebula Romance: Part 1 is on that album. But Perfume had to release an album, I guess, and Nakata had those songs ready. This would also partially explain why the Plasma Tour felt so damn conceptless the same way the Cosmic Explorer Tour did. But, again. That’s a whole other post.

Nebula Romance: Part 1 could have benefitted with a bit more time. To fully make it a concept album. To better tie the songs together. And for Nakata to better flesh out the songs and plug the gaps. Because every time I play this album from top to bottom and “Mobius” ends, I’m not left with a feeling of complete satisfaction. I’m left with a feeling of ‘something’s missing’. And some may say ‘Well, Part 2 will be the something that’s missing’. But this album should still have felt fully complete, better realised and able to stand on its own, and not half of one thing. Look at them Lord of the Rings films. Each of them represents a part in a three part story, but each film is still a fully complete film unto itself.

And whilst Nakata did well distracting us with a cool sounding album, I do still feel that there is an issue with what Perfume’s sonic identity is. It might be early days to hang this question on Nebula Romance: Part 1, because we’d have to see how Nebula Romance: Part 2 turns out and then how the follow up album to that turns out. But I do still feel that Nakata doesn’t have a complete grasp on Perfume’s sound and that he isn’t doing enough work to really define it. Because once again, we have a Perfume album which is a by-product of what Nakata was into at a given time. And as aforementioned, Nebula Romance: Part 1 really does sound a lot like a Metro Pulse 2. Perfume just get what they’re given, with Nakata doing no real tailoring for them in the manner of which he does for Pussy Pam, and I want that to change. There are some great songs on this album, but I constantly question how much Nakata is considering Perfume when he creates songs for them. And I think the answer to that lies in the quality of their music over the past decade and how he approaches their vocals.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 1 | Polydor Records

Nebula Romance: Part 1 honestly feels a little rushed. And whilst Perfume and Nakata’s approach over the past couple of years of playing it fast, loose and building the plane whilst its in the air has been fun, refreshing, and resulted in a lot of output with quicker turn-around times that we’ve had in the past — maybe everybody should’ve taken a beat when it came to this album, so the package could be a bit tighter. The pieces are there, they just needed more time, to be pushed a little more and for everybody to ask the question ‘What even is Perfume’s sound, what should it be now and how do we best package it?’. Nebula Romance: Part 1 feels close to the answers. But after two decades, an album and a bunch of songs which help them find the answers, Perfume should be so much closer to them than this, and I really hope Nebula Romance: Part 2 gets them there.

Album highlights:
Cosmic Treat 🏅
Starlight Dreams 🥇
Ima Ima Ima 🏅
Time Capsule 🏅
Jikuuka 🏅
Mobius 🏅