Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.

Pretty. Odd. (2008, Fueled By Ramen) Panic at the Disco's second studio album. ***

As everyone knows, if you’ve an exclamation point in the name of your band and then drop it, it obviously means you’ve radically shifted the sound so that you’ve done shittiness in one genre and now moved on to the next. Why Panic was suddenly inspired by the Beatles is beyond anyone, probably even the band members, but they need to understand that that’s not who they are, and they never will be. Pretty. Odd. is not by any stretch comparable to Sgt. Pepper, and any critic who makes that mistake should be shot. Granted, this album isn’t garbage. It’s not great, either. What we have is an above-average mix of songs that are completely second-rate to their inspirations of 60’s psychedelic pop. The lyrics are beyond terrible, and it features far too many instruments that we know no one in the band is capable of playing. If there’s anything admirable about their change in approach, they at least chose the correct era of the Beatles to mimic.