Imagine being WACK right now. Just a few short years ago, your entire company consisted of an upstart tribute project of a legacy brand that had inadvertently spawned a whole subculture within a subculture, and while it was probably clear to everybody involved that this project would have success at the very least on paper, not even Watanabe’s own fairy godmother would have put money on him sitting at the top of a giant-ass pile of money here in the Year of Pour Lui 2020, with project after project hitting all the right notes and doing things that chika idols* aren’t supposed to do.
And at the base and peak of it all sits BiSH, whose LETTERS EP continues a string of technically quite good releases from the group who once dressed in rags and got kicked out of TIF but are now proper headliners with all the slick support of any of the industry giants they were once created in part to overcome. I personally haven’t been as big a fan of their music since THE GUERILLA BiSH felt like a step down from the heady success of GiANT KiLLERS, but I nonetheless support the group and its members with the same doe-eyed fan energy as ever. Hence it’s been somewhat bittersweet to see WACK group after WACK group lap them creatively over the past few years. See, for instance, the newest album from BiS!
But because this is apparently the summer of WACK, BiSH couldn’t just let LETTERS stand on a single MV release, and yesterday they gave us one of the very best things they’ve ever done:
The music is very on brand for where BiSH sits these days, but the video has that fun, irreverent, we-take-ourselves-seriously-so-you-should-too-but-really-we’re-just-here-to-have-fun-at-the-same-time energy that I’ve missed from them. Also the weapons and warzone setting and whatever the hell is going on about 90 percent of the time. This is that good-ass content I signed up for.
And while we’re wrapping up, note that this post wouldn’t be complete without this particular Sgt. Pepper’s-esque parting shot:
— BiSHオフィシャル (@BiSHidol) August 13, 2020
