Panic! At The Disco - Pretty.Odd. Review

Boys in emo bands have it pretty good these days, don't they? The chords are easy, the girls adoring, and the Facebook friends bountiful. Plus, for all the specificity of their tribal markings — the guyliner, the geometric swoops of hair, the exquisitely tight jeans — today's scene makers cut an increasingly large swath demographically: Last year alone, Fall Out Boy dabbled in hip-hop by nabbing a Jay-Z cameo (''Thriller''); Gym Class Heroes repurposed a decades-old Supertramp hook for a top 10 pop hit (''Cupid's Chokehold''); and the Plain White T's pleased tweens and moms alike with a sweet acoustic ballad (''Hey There Delilah'')....full text Members of most bands pay their dues in a van with no money and no audience, but Panic at the Disco's Ryan Ross played nurse to an alcoholic dad who died when the young quartet first hit the road. And it's given the Vegas kids an acute sense of responsibility. Since few but the 1.5 million girls who bought Panic's first attempts at musicianship believed they deserved their success, it's not really a surprise that their follow-up feels like massive overcompensation....full text Panic at the Disco's sophomore set has a lot more cheery moments and fewer busy elements than its smash debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," and, much like the exclamation point now absent from the band's name, the superfluous noise is hardly missed. In a Beatles nod, the album begins with the crowd-noise-enhanced intro "We Were Starving" before "Nine in the Afternoon" bursts with upbeat power chords and a singalong chorus....full text