Perfume -- Drive'n The Rain

 

There was only one time that I can remember when I was in a car traveling through Tokyo while it was raining. It was during an afternoon and I was in the back seat and a mint-fresh Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）was electrifying and terrifying me on the car radio. Other than that, because I wasn't earning a salary which would ever get me a car (not that I would ever get behind the wheel in any event), I never had the pleasure of bombing up and down the highways and byways of Japan. As such, please enjoy this nocturnal drive through the nation's largest city as provided by YouTuber Drive Slow.

Marcos V. cottoned me onto this song months ago and I'd thought that he would write up an article about it, but it's been a while and I've been enjoying it so I'm just going to go ahead with it myself. By the way, I remember seeing technopop trio Perfume appearing on last year's Kohaku Utagassen and if I'm not mistaken, they performed "Spinning World" from their 8th album "Plasma" (July 2022) and an oldie, "Chocolate Disco".

I was a tad disappointed though that the ladies hadn't sung another track from "Plasma" and that is "Drive'n The Rain". The reason was that although Yasutaka Nakata（中田ヤスタカ）kept that Perfume synthpop flavour, he also infused the song with something that a YouTube commenter described as "electronic Steely Dan". And yup, I gather that Nakata must have been listening to "Aja" when he was getting inspired to put in those synthesized Steely Dan-friendly horns. Of course, those keyboards and the disco flute help set the mood, too.

I've been seeing a few remixes of "Drive'n The Rain" on YouTube as well, including this one by Venom Valentine. As for "Plasma", it hit No. 3 on the Oricon album charts and it finished last year in 72nd place.