PATD; A Pretty Odd Review

After smashing the charts and making oodles of money on their breakthrough premiere album Panic! At The Disco are back with their sophomore attempt titled Pretty.Odd. The band is hoping to show their musical chops and aim for a more mature audience. So the first change was dropping the ! from their name. And for good reason. Gone are the flashy lyrics, the stinging one-liners, and the sexy attitude that made the tween crowds go ga-ga. What the band is presenting here is a much more trippy, adult-tinged foray into The Beatles and The Beach Boys bag o' tricks.

The band still implores the horns and the stringed sections from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, but they're used much less frequently and not to increase the festive atmosphere, but to carry you away to a new atmosphere. The music is very melodic and slow and the boys have clearly decided that you don't have to sound like you're having a good time in order to make good music. But the truth is, you don't have to have a good time to be a good band. There in lies the catch.

This album is truly good. The lyrics are much more poignant and meaningful and the songs are arranged with a lot more care and precision. But the tempo of the entire album never gets above a loud roar. If Fever was an album of roller coaster theme park rides then Pretty.Odd is a kiddie sized merry-go-round. What they've managed to create are careful, lasting songs that people can listen to ten or fifteen years from now without feeling old. What they may have forgotten to take into account is that their fan base is not THAT much older since their 2005 debut. They might not be ready for the "laying in the lily field" sound that Panic has created.

When The Killers released Hot Fuss in 2004 they were the new face of glam rock. No, not your '80s glam, but a new era of boys in make-up playing good rock n' roll that the general public could tap their feet to. By the time their follow-up Sam's Town was released the make-up, flashy suits, and free spirit had been erased and replaced with bearded men with sulky faces. Their music wasn't worse, but the fun was gone and so were a lot of fans. I fear that Panic might be making the same mistake. Will the Fall Out Boy crowd follow these guys now that they want to be stars? I'm not so sure.

Either way, what it's really about is the music. And the album is full of top notch songs including the best tune "Behind the Sea" where Brandon Urie belts; "Behind the sea they sang, So our matching legs are marching clocks, And we're all too small to talk to God. Yes, we're all too smart to talk to God." Other great songs include the entirely too short, but appropriately named "Folkin' Around." Only two up-tempo songs make the cut one of which is the closing track "Mad as Rabbits."

The Beatles influence and White Album rip-offs (I mean that in a good way) don't end with the band's songs. They also recorded at Abbey Road. If the band can capture an older audience with the song's first single "Nine in the Afternoon," then they have a chance to grown a bigger, long-lasting fan base. I doubt they'll ever enter The Beatles stratosphere as far as album sales, but they've done a nice job here of capturing that atmosphere.

Album Grade: B+