Hachimitsu represents the culmination of years of struggle, during which four Tokyo art students had made the long, steep ascent to making their rock ’n’ roll dreams a reality. In the early ’90s, Spitz was a young band building its sound around chiming guitars, power-pop hooks, and alt-rock energy, freely mixing acoustic picking with roaring rock riffs. A few albums in, the band experimented with a less rocking, more elaborately arranged sound, finally earning its first real success. But 1995’s Hachimitsu, Spitz’s sixth album, broke the group through to superstar status by following a pretty simple plan: embracing its beginnings anew. The multi-Platinum album that made Spitz one of Japan’s biggest rock bands (a perch it would maintain for many years to come) returns to the basic recipe of its first couple of albums: infectious guitar pop that is short on frills and long on infectious riffs. Both the outsize production moves and the grungy tones Spitz had tried out along the way were sanded down to let the band’s core sound shine through. The result is not a million miles from what bands like Gin Blossoms were doing in the mid-’90s. Even though a lot of what the four members are doing here goes back to their early agenda, the production on Hachimitsu is simultaneously clearer and punchier than anything Spitz had done before. Things feel more full-bodied than ever, giving all the instruments their own space in the mix and allowing for frontman Masamune Kusano’s bell-like vocals to ring out with a greater resonance. “Robinson” and “Namidaga Kirari” are the singles that aided in the album’s rise to renown. The blend of distorted and crystalline guitars on the former and the combination of pure pop melodic maneuvers and understated production on the latter exemplify the balance the band achieved on the album that established its spot in Japanese rock history.