Album Review: Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2

I was concerned about this album. I wasn’t a huge fan of “Moon”. I wasn’t a huge fan of “Shein Factory”. The snippets of “Solar Wind” had me thinking that Nakata had lazily just re-imagined “Ima Ima Ima”. “Mega Man Poo Poo” wasn’t doing much for me. “Nebula Romance” was the only song that I wholeheartedly liked. Then the album preview dropped and I thought ‘Here we go again’. But then the album actually dropped and I was kinda ‘gagged’ as the kids say.

Whilst going into an album with low expectations leaves more room to be pleasantly surprised, it’s always nicer if you’re in a state of excitement at a release. But the rollouts for Nebula Romance: Part 1 and 2 have been such a mess, that it was hard for me to get excited about either of them. And then there is the baggage of how I’ve felt about Perfume’s albums for the past few years — leaving my expectations low. But that’s a whole other post. The rollout is also a whole other post, but let’s touch on it a little bit here anyway.

The rollouts of Nebula Romance Parts 1 and 2 have been a mess. And it’s unfortunate. Because there was a real chance for Perfume to show growth with these albums and push the perception of the group into a different and necessary space. To show they are more than just those cute teenage girls from Hiroshima and “Chocolate Disco” — something I don’t think Perfume themselves have ever let go of, and willingly refuse to let go of. But Perfume has been putting out some good songs with the potential to really reintroduce what Perfume is at this point in their careers. Nebula Romance was a chance to do it and yet, they didn’t. This bothered me somewhat with Nebula Romance: Part 1, because it featured some really good songs that felt fresh for Perfume and could become new classics and setlist fixtures. This reluctance to really shift a perception and sell an album is a huge issue with Nebula Romance: Part 2. Because not only is this album good, but this might be the first album which actually says something about Perfume and centers them. So it’s a shame that it got done dirty by such a shitty rollout. But that’s a whole other post. And it’s a post which will come soon, because I have A LOT to say about Nebula Romance’s shoddy rollout. It really is a mess. Perfume now announcing their hiatus sheds some light on why there was a slight sense of ‘Fuck it’ to how the rollout went. Everybody kinda checked out, but also didn’t want to push Perfume more than was necessary.

Nebula Romance: Part 2 is difficult for me to take as a standalone album, because it feels so tied to other albums. Nebula Romance: Part 2 is the sequel to an album which felt like a re-do of another album. But in actuality, Nebula Romance: Part 2, feels more like what Part 1 shoulda have been and is the true re-do of that other album. But narratively, Nebula Romance: Part 2 feels like a continuation of a story which started with the Polygon Wave EP. Except, this story wasn’t continued in Perfume’s Plasma album, which followed up the Polygon Wave EP and featured all of its songs. The continuation of Polygon Wave’s story was instead told in Capsule’s Metro Pulse, which Nebula Romance: Part 2 feels like the true sequel to.

Everything is kinda fucked.

But if you just look at the Polygon Wave EP, Plasma, Metro Pulse, Nebula Romance: Part 1 and Nebula Romance: Part 2 as though they’re part of the Yasutaka Nakata cinematic universe, it makes more sense. Kinda. But when you look at each of Perfume’s albums in isolation, it makes far less sense. And then there is the way that Nebula Romance has been branded and marketed to press, which muddies the water even more.

Nebula Romance was pushed as being part of this Sci-Fi story. Now, Perfume stans can call me all sorts of fa**ot and ni**a — which they love to do whenever I say something they disagree with or don’t like, even when I am right. BUT, the entire story of Nebula Romance: Part 1 was not told in the music and this was a problem. Because why promote an album and make the story of it a selling point, if that story is just going to be confined to the album inlay, the music video and the tour? It’s almost like Perfume’s team realised this was a mistake with Part 1, because Part 2 does have a story which is told through the music — with a clear throughline from the beginning to the end. And the story told in the Nebula Romance: Part 2 album inlay, live performances, music video and music are much more aligned. So, that’s something and that’s cool. A lesson was learned.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

So much of Nebula Romance: Part 2 feels like it course corrects from Part 1. And these course corrections feel like direct addresses to near-enough all of the issues I had with Part 1. The whole time I was listening to this album I was thinking ‘Did Yasutaka Nataka actually read my album review?’. I am really curious to know the timeline of when Nebula Romance: Part 2 was put together, because I think it could explain a lot about why it ended up the way it did, why Nebula Romance: Part 1 — an album which already felt a little conceptless and incomplete — feels even more so now by comparison. And why “Exit” feels like it was intended to close the album, but doesn’t.

Listening to Part 2 really reinforces how incomplete an album Part 1 was. To such a degree that it makes me think that we should never have gotten Nebula Romance: Part 1 at all. We should have gotten one LP and it should have been this one, with none of the songs from Part 1 on it. At most, Nebula Romance: Part 1 should have been an EP — Nebula Romance: Prelude or something.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

An issue I had with most of the songs on Part 1 (and Nakata’s productions in general over the past few years) is that they always felt a little incomplete. So many of Perfume’s songs just didn’t go anywhere. The songs were flat. There were no energy shifts. Cool things didn’t happen in the songs. There was no real journey from the beginning to the end. A song would end the way in which it started. A song which felt like it should have more energy, just didn’t — i.e. “The Light”. This isn’t the case with Part 2, with the exceptions of “Temu Factory” and “Moon” — but we’ll get to those. All of the other songs on this album feel far more complete and better realised than any of the songs on Part 1. There are still a couple of instances where I’m like ‘Hmm…I coulda done with a bit more’. Nakata seems to struggle with second verses these days. Sometimes a song works without a second verse, and you aren’t immediately aware that it doesn’t even have one, because the song structure is so slick and just works. But sometimes you really do notice the lack of a second verse, and the song feels as though it’s been cut short and is missing something. “Reboot World” works by not having a second verse. But “Megu Loop” doesn’t, because the song feels as though it jumps to a section of the song you would expect to hear later on, after a bridge section or a middle 8.

Generally though, Nakata does good here. More songs feel whole and complete than not. I still would have liked more, but this is from a place of ‘These songs are so good that I wish Nakata had just pushed them a little more’ as opposed to ‘Where is the rest of the song?’. I would have loved Nakata to have chopped the shit out of Perfume’s vocals for a breakdown on “Virtual Fantasy” — similar to how he did on “Night Flight”. But the song is still great. I would have liked the ending of “Teenage Dreams” to have been drawn out a little more, to further evoke the feeling of reminiscing and not letting go of a memory. But the song is still good and feels full. Shit. It even has a second verse! And “Reboot World” is such a blast, that part of me wishes that it was the “Game”, “Edge” or “Party Maker” of the album — a 5 minute long banger. But the song has a much faster tempo than the aforementioned songs, so expecting Perfume to dance to it for 5–6 minutes would be a human rights violation, unless they got to have an intermission after it. Also, the song works better by not being so long, given that the entire thing feels like a race against time.

Nebula Romance: Part 2 is also a really cool sounding album from top to bottom. The vibe and flavour of the songs across the album feel more consistent here than they did on Nebula Romance: Part 1 and Plasma. And there is a newness we get here, just as we did on Nebula Romance: Part 1. “Virtual Fantasy” is a clear standout in this regard — giving Perfume a bit of a bounce and an R&B slant, that we’d only gotten prior on songs such as “Kiss & Music” and “1mm” — two Perfume songs I adore. So I am all for any throwback to those sounds.

This album being very 80s synth pop is going to be divisive, especially amongst the Perfume fans who like Perfume’s more hard hitting electro songs and the fans who are exhausted somewhat by it, with it being Perfume’s third album in a row to have 80s synth pop as the core sound — which I absolutely get. But the thing I like most about the sound of this album is that there is a warmth to the sound and a whole lot of drum fills and guitars that make me want to hear these songs performed by a live band. “Reboot World” and “Exit” in particular would absolutely rock if played by a live band. And I think a live band would really transform some of the other songs too, such as “Nebula Romance” and “Megu Loop”. So I hope when Perfume return from their cold sleep, that they don’t just run “Polyrhythm” and “Chocolate Disco” from a-chan’s Spotify account for live performances and that they shed a light on songs from this album and reimagine them fully live.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

Something else about Part 1 that made me screw my face up and go ‘Hmmm’ was Perfume’s vocals, or specifically how they were approached. I liked that we got more of Perfume singing closer to their natural voices. But I got really tired of so many of the songs featuring Perfume singing in unison and never in a harmony. There weren’t enough moments which highlighted each member. And Nocchi was categorically sidelined the way she has been since JPN. Every one of these things is addressed on this album.

Nebula Romance: Part 2 makes a very clear effort to highlight that we are listening to three different people, with different voices and different singing styles. Long time Perfume fans can listen to any Perfume song from over the years and distinguish who is singing what. But now without each member singing in the same flat and linear manner they had done for the past 20 years and a-chan saying ‘Fuck it’ and singing in her natural singing voice — it feels like the individuality of a-chan, Kashiyuka and Nocchi’s voices are being embraced to a much greater degree, and it adds SO much to the songs. There are even moments on songs where the differences in their voices is highlighted — such as on “Virtual Fantasy”, where a-chanté Moore gets to have her lil’ ad-lib moment, we hear Nocchina Aguilera singing really low and Kashiyuka…does what it is that she does. And there are far more moments across this album where Perfume actually give us harmonies, such as on “Reboot World”, “Nebula Romance” and “Solar Wind”, and it makes such a difference to the sonics of the songs, because it opens them up so much more. When I went back to listen to songs from Complete Best, Game and Triangle, I realised that an element which contributed to those songs sounding so good is that we got harmonies once upon a time — whether it was Perfume actually singing them or Nakata manipulating the vocals to make them. But this slowly became less of a thing over time. A theme across everything of Nebula Romance: Part 2 seems to be returning back to the earliest state of Perfume. And I don’t know whether this was intentional, even down to the approach to Perfume’s voices. But I dig it. It makes the songs feel richer than they would have done otherwise.

Nakata went through a phase where he treated vocals like they were non-factors to his music, and that was if he used them at all. This was to such a point that there was a period where Toshiko was barely on songs on Capsule albums and Perfume’s songs featured vocal-less hooks and long-ass instrumental passes. So it’s nice that Perfume’s music has landed here, and that their voices not only feel like an important part of the songs, but makes them in a lot of cases. I was so sick and tired of Perfume singing everything high and linear, that for a lot of their singles, I always preferred listening to the instrumentals. And this was when I realised ‘Oh, the reason I don’t like this song is because of how Perfume are singing it’. Where-as here, I couldn’t imagine wanting to listen to these songs without Perfume’s vocals.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

Nocchi really shines on this album. The line distribution still favours a-chan and Kashiyuka over her on most of the songs. But despite that, Nocchi still shines. You can tell that her voice is kinda locked somewhat to singing in the typical Perfume manner though, almost like she feels she can’t stray too far from it in case somebody comes at her with a belt. Compared to a-chan who is like ‘FUCK THAT SHIT’. We all heard that song Nocchi did with Sheena Ringo, so we know Nocchi can give us more than what she does here and is capable of breaking out of ‘Perfume mode’. And even on that song Nocchi was holding back. But regardless, Nocchi gets more moments on songs and really stands out. Nocchi’s voice is a bit crusty. But she has a cool tone and texture which works really well with the buzzy 80s sound of this album, which contrasts nicely with a-chan’s crystal clear tone. And then Kashiyuka…sounds as she does.

Kashiyuka still gets pretty sizable parts on songs, but she fades a lot into the background on this album because…she can’t sing. The songs on this album require more from Perfume than any of their other albums, and Kashiyuka’s voice just isn’t versatile enough to deliver what a song needs. Her voice is so toneless and flat, that I’m like ‘Ooo, gurl’. The way she sounds singing the pre-chorus on “Solar Wind” compared to Nocchi is like night and day. Nocchi hits that shit. Kashiyuka…does not. The way she hits ‘IN DIS CODED SANCTUAREEEEEEEEEEEEE’ on “Virtual Fantasy” compared to a-chan, is like comparing the vocals of Beyoncé to Selena Gomez.

Kashiyuka has always been a weak vocalist. But her linear motor girl style of singing worked on Perfume’s earlier songs because her natural singing style fit perfectly with how Nakata wanted Perfume to sound anyway. And not only were a-chan and Nocchi made to sing the same way, but there was the autotune too. But with a-chan and Nocchi deviating from the old Perfume way of singing to varying degrees and vocally being able to really step outside of that to fit the songs, Kashiyuka’s voice doesn’t have the range to go anywhere else. Her voice is the one in the group which feels the most conditional. It works really well on some songs (“Ima Ima Ima” and “Starlight Dreams” from Nebula Romance: Part 1), but it doesn’t just work on any and every song the way a-chan’s and Nocchi’s are able to.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

The sequencing on Perfume’s albums has always been terrible. JPN ending with “Spice” and not “My Color”. LEVEL3 having “Mirai no Museum” sandwiched in-between “1mm” and “Party Maker”. Cosmic Explorer closing out with “Hold Your Hand” instead of “Star Train”. Nebula Romance: Part 1 putting slow-ass “Jikuuka” in-between the album bangers “Time Capsule” and “Mobius” and not making it the album intro. Even an album like Triangle — which wasn’t preceded by a long string of singles and long felt like the only Perfume album which was made as a body of work — still suffered from wonky sequencing. Like, why is “Love the World” the first song after “Take Off”?

Nebula Romance: Part 2’s sequencing is not perfect, namely because of “GU Factory” and “Moon” feeling like they weren’t cut from the same cloth as the rest of the material on the album. “Temu Factory” coming after “Teenage Dreams” makes no sense. I think the better choice would have been to have left these songs off and recorded two new songs. Another solution could have been to have given them both album mixes of Cosmic Explorer proportions and changing the sounds to better fit the album. “Moon” at the very least does kinda work sonically. If you drop “Shein Factory”, then “Teenage Dreams”, “Moon” and “Exit” does flow quite nicely. But I will say this — “H&M Factory” and “Moon” were placed on the album in the only places where they made the most sense.

The sequencing of Part 2 is generally decent. It’s easily one of Perfume’s best sequenced albums. ALTHOUGH. There are a couple of changes I would have made. “Solar Wind” would have worked better coming after “Reboot World”. And I’m still torn on whether “Exit” should have been the album closer or if “Megu Loop” works best. But in light of Perfume announcing their hiatus, my tin foil hat theory is that Perfume’s hiatus was not something which was planned far in advance. So, originally “Exit” was the album closer, until the time came to record “Megu Loop” — which given the theme and context, was made to close the album. And I think this is somewhat corroborated by Perfume’s Nebula Romance: Episode Tokyo Dome show, where “Exit” closed the Nebula Romance: Part 2 part of the show and “Megu Loop” was separated out to be the encore and ‘Goodbye’ song. The more I listen to Nebula Romance: Part 2, the more I feel that “Megu Loop” does work better as an album closer than “Exit”, because it feels like it provides more closure to the album. And it makes the album end on a different note to Nebula Romance: Part 1, because “Mobius” and “Exit” are pretty similar in vibe. I really do wish “Megu Loop” had a second verse though.

But Nebula Romance: Part 2 still flows really well. I’ve found myself playing it from top to bottom more times than I have any other Perfume album. There is no song so bad that I feel the urge to skip it. And it helps that the album is super tight, at just 10 tracks and a runtime just shy of 40 minutes.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

So, at the top of this review I had mentioned that this album says something about Perfume and centers them, which may sound weird given that…this is a Perfume album. But long-time fans of Perfume know that Perfume’s music is as much about the producer they have worked with exclusively for their entire career to date as it is Perfume. Sometimes even more so. And sometimes to Perfume’s detriment. Live performances are where Perfume shine and show their truest selves. The music? Not so much. But on Nebula Romance: Part 1 there was a slight shift. It was a shift which had actually started on LEVEL3. But for the 5 years which followed, Perfume’s sound kinda went through the wringer. Meanwhile, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu — another act exclusively produced by Nakata — didn’t see their music suffer in quite the same way. For years I had been saying that Nakata’s relationship with Kyary outside of being her producer resulted in her music feeling more personal to her and Nakata caring more about it. Because Kyary is not just somebody he’s producing music for — that’s his homegirl. But Perfume and Nakata’s relationship seemed to change during 2020, from which point Perfume’s music got better, which seemed to stem from Nakata actually building a relationship with them. There’s nothing like a global pandemic to make you reevaluate your relationships with people.

Whenever Perfume used to talk about Nakata, there was a distance between them. But from “Polygon Wave” onward, that distance seemed to close. Perfume themselves had even mentioned how different things felt with Nakata, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this bled into the music and contributed to it getting better. It’s insane to me that Nakata and Perfume could work together for over two decades without having any sort of relationship outside of just making the music. But it also explains a lot about why the quality of Perfume’s music had been all over the place for a minute, and why the songs felt so non-specific to them for so long.

Nebula Romance: Part 2 really does feel like it is a Perfume album. Not just another album produced by Yasutaka Nakata of Capsule. Of course, there is that element to the music — there always will be. But there also is a sense of awareness that Nakata seems to have developed, where he realised that Perfume’s songs need to be theirs, and not just Nakata songs which happen to feature Perfume.

Another issue I had with Perfume’s music over time — and also with Nebula Romance: Part 1 — is that Perfume’s songs were always about the same things. There were never any new perspectives, or new framings of things. And the songs didn’t really tell us anything about Perfume, which is probably because Nakata never took the time to get to know them. And whilst Nebula Romance: Part 2 doesn’t do a complete 180 and still re-treads well worn ground, it at least feels like it tries to put forth something new in terms of subject matters and how they relate to Perfume. “Teenage Dreams” is the song on the album where this really hits. And it also helps that there is an arc which goes across the album. An arc which has a new context in light of Perfume’s announcement that they will go on an indefinite hiatus.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

Before Nebula Romance: Part 2 had dropped, I had frequently said how cool it would be for Perfume to release Nebula Romance complete which features Part 1 and 2 sequenced together. But having listened to Parts 1 and 2 back-to-back, I can’t even see how this would work. Because the songs from Part 1 really do not sit well alongside songs from Part 2. And there are several instances where it feels like for a song on Part 1 there is an equivalent of it on Part 2. Part 1 has “Cipher”. Part 2 has “Jikuuka”. Part 1 has “The Light”. Part 2 has “Reboot World”. Part 1 has “Ima Ima Ima”. Part 2 has “Solar Wind”. Part 1 has “Starlight Dreams”. Part 2 has “Teenage Dreams”. Putting Parts 1 and 2 together feels redundant for the most part. And there are some songs on Part 1 which just don’t fit with songs from Part 2. So we can scrap that Nebula Romance Complete idea. Although for the sake of a collectors item it would still be a worthwhile release and one which would make sense. Part 2 truly is a sequel. It is not supposed to be fused, intermingled and mixed with Part 1.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

Nebula Romance: Part 2 feels like Cosmic Explorer, Plasma and Nebula Romance: Part 1 done right. Perfume’s music still feels behind where it should be. But at least the songs are good and there is a greater sense of their music moving forward. And this album clicks and makes sense in a way that Plasma and Nebula Romance: Part 1 just didn’t. You could kinda see the vision for both albums, but the execution stopped them from being realised in the way they should have been. The vision for Nebula Romance: Part 2 is much clearer by comparison. It feels far more whole and more considered as an album than Part 1 did. And there is a much clearer narrative thread on Part 2 than there was on Part 1. However, whilst I do feel that Nebula Romance: Part 2 is a satisfying enough album, I do wish it felt bigger. Triangle, JPN and LEVEL3 each big, which was probably because of where Perfume and Nakata’s careers were at the time. Triangle was the follow up to Game. So Perfume and Nakata had to prove that Game was not a fluke, that they had substance and that they could elevate. JPN had to show that Perfume weren’t just some niche group, but that they could sit within pop and that their songs were more than good enough to sit alongside big pop releases from more established groups on bigger labels. And LEVEL3 was Perfume’s first album on a new record label, at a point when they knew they would be releasing the album and touring it internationally, so it had to feel big. Nebula Romance: Part 2 needed a similar sort of energy. There is a sense of this largeness with “Reboot World” and kinda with “Solar Wind”. But for the most part, Part 2 feels small in scope sonically. It just doesn’t match the epicness of something you would associate with something which was produced as a score to a blockbuster space opera about three girls. The boundaries of what Perfume should be aren’t pushed enough, when this was the perfect album and narrative framing to do it with. Reboot the system. Recreate a world in their own making. To break expectations of what people see Perfume as. Nebula Romance: Part 2 toys with these ideas, but seems afraid to really go all the way with them. And this is what holds it back.

Perfume - Nebula Romance: Part 2 | Polydor Records

The prospect of where Perfume could go from Nebula Romance: Part 2 was exciting. But given the news of their hiatus which was announced after the release of the album, I do wonder what Perfume’s restart point will be. Will Perfume give us something fresh and new? Will they just pick up where this album left off? Or will they end up regressing? Because I had this same sense of excitement of where Perfume would go when they put out LEVEL3, and then we got Cosmic Explorer which threw everything in the wrong direction. So, I guess we’ll see.

Album highlights:
▪ Reboot World
▪ Solar Wind 🥈
▪ Virtual Fantasy 🥇
▪ Teenage Dreams