More restrained Yasutaka Nakata fan-boy and fan-girlism!
[Video][Website]
[6.90]
Patrick St. Michel: “Perfume always sounds like innocent girls who fall in love with someone with pure heart.” That’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu summing up Japan’s premier techno-pop trio better than anyone else ever has. The joke, though, is they (and especially producer Yasutaka Nakata) have made that romance factory efficient over the years. They’ve found time to explore interesting sonic terrain over the past few years, but “Magic Of Love” isn’t an example of that. Rather, it fits the mold of “proto-Perfume,” resembling singles like “Spring Of Life,” “VOICE,” “One Room Disco” and “Fushizen Na Girl.” This one does feature a few nifty details — the most immediate is how each member of the group gets a chance to sing free of Nakata’s electro filters, which is a nice change of pace from there last year of songs. Nakata himself give himself more space to experiment and have fun on those wordless bridges, another nice detour. But really, as long as Perfume keep making songs with choruses like this and release them just in time to appear on every summer mix I make, I’m going to keep the praise coming.
[8]
Iain Mew: The “Magic of Love” video emerging on the same day as that for “Invader Invader” by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu very nicely sets up narratives comparing the two Yautaka Nakata-produced acts. Although “Spending All My Time” and the Doraemon soundtracking “Mirai no Museum” took slight departures for different audiences, Perfume’s post-Kyary work seems quite focussed. It’s like Kyary is now the avenue for experiments in new genres and instruments, and Perfume’s songs are the result of poring over the same blueprints and finding tiny incremental improvements. “Magic of Love” is very close to “Spice,” the first time the Jukebox reviewed Perfume, built from cleanly intersecting synth lines with vocals poking through the filters. As such the song is not exciting, exactly, but it is gorgeous and the middle eight is a particular triumph of design.
[7]
Alfred Soto: We haven’t liked this act much, right? I needed to be reminded — their songs evaporate seconds after consumption. Here the vocals are as unctuous as the synth slime.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: The video’s cavalcade of Pop Art colors and geometric shapes strike me as a far better visual metaphor for Nakata’s productions than Kyary’s overstuffed grotesques. As busy as his work is, it’s (maybe paradoxically) also clean, efficient, and precise. Perfume, who get to trade off vocals — even with themselves — rather than having to be a single hyperfocused star, ride the machine as efficiently as ever.
[7]
Brad Shoup: When Perfume is on, I’m in a very specific place, a place that Patrick Adams puts me with “Making Love” and “Spaced Out.” His synths ooze and unzip, his singers work on phrase; it’s heaven for me, but I understand if you start to check your clock. Of course, Perfume and their producer work in such a way that the vocals and synths twin: a mainframe that daydreams. It’s all so effervescent, as tenuous as bubbles: one listener can let the repetition transport, the other is ready to pop. Generally with Perfume, I’m transported.
[8]
Cecily Nowell-Smith: When I call this anaemic filter-house it’s not really a put-down. I imagine everyone involved in the Perfume project would be rather disappointed with themselves if their songs had even half the muscle of, I dunno, Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You”. Lightness is everything: the bubbles, the treble, the thin-edged voices. Without the video’s brightness, its synchronised mock-plugsuits and happy wallpaper dresses, this song might even be too light for the brain to hold on to. As fluttering and untouchable as a butterfly or the breeze.
[7]
Will Adams: This is Perfume operating at 75%. Granted, that’s still pretty good. The chorus is ace (though that’s almost a given at this point), and Nakata’s trickery this time around involve snippets of grinding synth noise inserted at the ends of phrases. Still, there’s something missing that keeps it from leaping into the glorious highs they hit last year.
[7]
Alex Ostroff: Frothy, shimmering, strangely efficient — here, a compliment. “Magic of Love” maximizes joy without becoming overbearing or overstaying its welcome. It’s gone as quickly as it’s arrived, but that’s a virtue, too, in its own way.
[7]
David Lee: At one point during my solo three-hour drive between New York City and Boston the other day, the balmy cross breeze that resulted from my open windows began to weigh on my eyelids. Suddenly, “Magic of Love” started filtering out of my car’s speakers. This was the shot of energy I needed. I’m not sure I could say the same for a lot of contemporary music classified under the ever-elusive EDM label. Songs like Krewella’s “Alive” or Calvin Harris’s “I Need Your Love” offer up the equivalent of a sundae so overloaded with toppings – handclaps, pianos, basslines, reverb vocals – that they end up mounds of sheer sweetness. A prospect that I, despite my notorious sweet tooth, find boring. Sickening, even. And while some contend that Yasutaka Nakata has cemented the parameters of what constitutes a Perfume song, I experience “Love” as a complex journey through layers of aural flavor available to a dance producer. The song launches into airy synths from the get go and then bursts into an ecstatic chorus only to veer into a glittery beep-boop breakdown. If last summer’s stretches of sweltering weather serve as any kind of indicator for what to expect this year, I look forward to this blast of refreshment on those days when the air itself seems to sweat.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: If I didn’t know better, I’d say Perfume was going through its sophisti-pop phase based on this. It’s comforting as much as it is bright and carefree — J-pop has been mining these sounds to beautiful effect since the early 90s, what harm is a few extra years and a continent in the paradigm?
[7]