So GANG PARADE released the MV for their new single the other day, and it’s a nice song and all, but — likely due to the fact that it’s a theme song — kind of tame by the group’s recent-ish standards. Perhaps in the vernacular of today’s youth: It doesn’t so much slay as lightly buffet. A little disappointing!

Of course, as we know ’round these parts, the B side is the best side, and the companion track from the single is unexpectedly exactly what I needed not just from this record, but from like all of idol in the past several months:

Oh my goodness. Oh my. Oh.

Swing and jazz and the like are such perfectly suited musical styles for idols. Why not do it more? I have no idea. Hauptharmonie was our best and most delicious act dedicated to the brassy arts; Dance for Philosophy gets into it pretty often even if it isn’t their dominant sound; other groups dabble to varying extents; and that’s about it!

GANG PARADE just took the conceit and made Prohibition moonshine with it. I’d never have guessed that Kenta would write a tune like “RATESHOW” — not whether he could, but would, given how SCRAMBLES usually goes — nor that Yua, one of my low-key long-term favorite people in idol, would be his partner in it. Very literally good for them; it’s a fantastic track, and one that proves by exception(al) again that GANG PARADE is WACK’s most consistently interesting unit.

The only bad thing about it is that it won’t ever be performed in evening gowns on a slowly rotating stage bordered by a betuxedo-ed band of laudanum addicts in front of a bunch of newly drafted soldiers about to be shipped off while a swashbuckling archaeologist and an international criminal mastermind have a fistfight over a priceless diamond relic in the kitchen. Also, I don’t know if any of GANG PARADE members currently have hair that would lend itself well to the kinds of coifs that styling here calls for. All well and good!