Pretty. Odd. : Panic at the Disco : Review : Rolling Stone

A moment of silence, please, for the lost exclamation point. Panic! at the Disco have become Panic at the Disco, the biggest rock & roll punctuation controversy since .38 Special dumped their decimal point. So what does this change mean? Have Panic renounced teen silliness and become mature, sober-minded rock veterans? Ah, no. These Vegas boys have just picked up a new wardrobe of hugely entertaining pretensions, attempting to make their very own Sgt. Pepper. They even begin Pretty. Odd. with a psychedelic fanfare announcing, "We're so sorry we've been gone/We were busy writing songs for — you!" You don't have to check the notes to guess they mixed the horns and strings at Abbey Road.

Like any growing emo band, Panic want to make a Seventies-style art-rock epic. But where My Chemical Romance aim for Queen and the Killers imitate Bruce Springsteen, Panic go for ELO circa "Mr. Blue Sky." They still try to pick up chicks with lines like "You remind me of a few of my famous friends" or "We should feed our jewelry to the sea," in ballads with titles like "Nine in the Afternoon" and "That Green Gentleman." Yet the songs have the same catchy glitz as the band's breakthrough hit, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." (And speaking of tragedies, there's a song called "Folkin' Around.") Singer Brendon Urie makes the most of the wordplay he gets from guitarist-lyricist Ryan Ross, fighting for attention amid the violins and glee-club overdubs. The tunes are often beautiful, especially "Northern Downpour" and "She's a Handsome Woman," while "Mad as Rabbits" has a horn section beamed in from the Beatles' "Savoy Truffle." Even when it's over the top, which is basically always, Pretty. Odd. sounds cheerful, with a broad sense of humor that does honor to the noble legacy of ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne. These guyliner fart-knockers may have ditched their exclamation point, but they haven't lost their fundamental ridiculousness. It all makes "Folkin' Around" easy to forgive.