In the two and a half years since its
multi-platinum debut, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, threatened to eclipse the
band—Fall Out Boy—whose bassist helped bring it to national
attention, Panic At The Disco has done a lot more than strip the exclamation
point from its name. In many ways, the PATD responsible for Pretty. Odd. (that gratuitous
punctuation had to go somewhere) isn't even the same band whose keyboard-spiked
nü-emo initially grabbed Pete Wentz's ears. Like My Chemical Romance before it,
this Panic has "matured" via historical rewind button, only where MCR evolved
under the harder-rocking influence of Queen, Pretty. Odd. takes production cues
from George Martin and Brian Wilson. Nervous energy still crackles: "Pas De
Cheval" and "Mad As Rabbits," in spite of their respective epic choruses and
horn charts, should sate casual listeners looking for an obvious hit like
2005's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." But the album's majority—all baroque
orchestration (the horn- and string-rich "The Piano Knows Something I Don't
Know") and multilayered, Sgt. Pepper-esque psychedelia (the lovely "She's A Handsome
Woman")—demands far more than a casual listen. The question is, are the
masses who initially embraced Panic At The Disco committed enough to give it one