Bring back the 80s!

Of all of the post-BiS formations, I was probably the most excited about Billie Idle. I’ve long enjoyed Hirano Nozomi, and I’m a confirmed, card-carrying member of the First Summer Uika fan club, so that their new group was going to be something of a continuation of BiS relationships made me optimistic.

I’m not going to say that I was disappointed when I first followed a link to the YouTube video for “anarchy in the music scene,” which is such a hard callback to the punk of the 70s that I literally squeed when I saw the members wearing bomber jackets.

And then … hey, that’s not at all what anybody expected!

The thing is, no artist should be evaluated in terms other than those that they state for themselves (that is, how well did they accomplish “I’m going to do X”?), so to be disappointed because Billie Idle® didn’t come blazing out of the gate with punk rock fury is kind of dumb.

Instead, appreciate them for what they are: They like a good punk aesthetic that applies to certain of their songs, but to outright call them a punk unit isn’t terribly fair — they’ve actually released some of their less punk tracks as singles.

There’s actually a fairly strong synth pop / vaporwave feel to a lot of their music, this ironically thrown-back fuzzy electronic sound (or maybe they’re hanging out with Tenten too much) that wouldn’t be out of place at all on the opening end of a Devo concert.

Going by “the Fake Four,” this is a prolific group; like a lot of well-produced idols (despite their “Not Idol Not Kawaii” insistence), they basically launched at the same time as their first album, Idle Gossip; like six months later, they dropped Rock ‘n’ Roll Idle, which brought with it the video for the single (Google translated) “Beyond …”

THERE’S THE PUNK!

I think it’s worth pointing out that this is a talented group, and they’re well-supported by rock and idol industry people, and they have an angle that seems to be working for them, so they’re probably going to be around for a while, but, more importantly, they’re probably going to evolve over time, and that’s cool.

What they sound like

The soundtrack to a 1983 movie about a group of misunderstood high schoolers whose only way out of a trip straight to juvenile hall is to solve the mystery of what’s really going on at the big dam construction site (answer: it’s a crazed environmental activist posing as Bigfoot) and save the town from certain destruction, with a definite nerds vs. jocks subplot that never actually resolves.

You’ll like them if

The Go-Go’s and the Bangles and then like 20 years later the Donnas were your jam.

Entries on the Ultimate Homicidol Playlist

The above tracks, plus:

Members

First Summer Uika Twitter blog weird live Q&A thing	Yasui Yahui
Hirano Nozomi Twitter blog	Momose Momo

Discography

“anarchy in the music scene” (single)
“be my boy” (single)
IDLE GOSSIP (album)
IDLE GOSSIP (w/ bonus track “welcome idle”) (album)
“be-bop tu-tu” (single)
ROCK “N” ROLL IDLE (album)
ROCK “N” ROLL IDLE (w/ bonus track “I WILL CALL YOU”)
4 in 1: The Official Bootleg (EP)