A Live Track-By-Track Review Of: Panic At The Disco's Pretty. Odd.

I like to be a nice friend, and as such, I downloaded the new Panic At The Disco album. I promise you, my friends can confirm that I’m not just saying this to cover up my closet love of Panic At The Disco. I'm definitely not that kind of girl. However, after hearing the lead single from the album, “Nine In The Afternoon”, I decided to listen and see how much the band hijacks The Beatles and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade album.

I decided, whilst listening, that I was going to do a track-by-track, from an outsider’s perspective of the music. I’ll give it an unbiased listen, save for the fact that the quality of this rip (it’s an MTV rip) makes me want to eat a goat out of anger. I’m sorry, I’m not an extreme audio dork, but this is ridiculous.

Remember, I’m writing this as I listen to the songs, so I will change what I say a lot. I feel that this is a more honest way to write about a pop record, so here it is. Without further ado…

Holly Dixon’s Track-By-Track LIVE Review of Panic At The Disco’s Pretty. Odd.

1. “We’re So Starving”
   These guys have really decided it was about time to jock the style of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, right down to the cheering. The arrangement is mighty fine to, and the lyrics are strangely okay. Just okay.
2. “Nine In The Afternoon”
   Again, jocking the style of Sgt. Pepper’s, and if you don’t believe me, listen to this song, then listen to McCartney’s section of “A Day In The Life”. The piano is straight off that. The song is catchy enough, but it’s very generic. Paint-by-numbers Panic At The Disco, if you ask me. However, to Panic fans, I have to ask you, what does “nine in the afternoon” even mean?
3. “She’s a Handsome Woman”
   From the start, this song is much better than the band has ever been. Brendan Urie somehow sounds different here, and the melody is much more pleasing than a fair few pop songs that I’ve heard in recent times. Top marks for the lyric, “I wasn’t born to be a skeleton.”
4. “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?”
   Creepy arrangement, and more Sgt. Pepper’s, though this time I can’t place my finger on exactly which song, though I have to say it feels like a morose version of “Fixin’ A Hole”. Status report the album thus far, which I’m noticing right now: Why does Urie’s voice waver like that?
5. “That Green Gentleman”
   Panic At The Disco’s arrangement has always been rather pleasing to me, to the point where I wish I had a Urie-mute button on my remote for Panic songs. This song is an example of Panic’s arrangement working well, in this case feeling fairly big, but at the same time very, very modest, in a “shoo-bee-doo-wah” way, if you know what I mean. The lyrics still aren’t the best, but to be fair, who really listens to Panic At The Disco for insightful lyrics?
6. “I Have Friends In Holy Spaces”
   Two-minute-long track. Urie plays with what sounds like a ukulele, and the quality has been changed to sound like it’s a song playing through an old gramophone. I’ve never been that fond of this effect, but oh well. It feels like “Blood” from The Black Parade, or “When You’re In Prison” from The Offspring’s Spinter. Love those horns!
7. “Northern Downpour”
   As of now, it’s just Urie and an acoustic guitar and a piano, with a line about how “diamonds just looked like broken glass to me.” This is the first Panic track that I’ could honestly say I really like, due to Urie’s very un-Urue-esque voice, the fun guitar, and the somber tone. If these boys made more music like this, I would probably actually like them a lot. “Hey moon, please forget to fall down,” what a well-delivered and cosy little line! Also, if that’s Ryan Ross singing with him, I think Ross should simply replace Urie, and this band would be so much more tolerable. I’m also enjoying the chanting in the background.
8. “When The Day Met The Night”
   Am I the only one who thinks that’s the most Mellon Collie song title since the song titles from Mellon Collie? Anyway, this is kind of okay so far, as well. “When the sun met the moon, he was drinking tea in the garden under the green umbrella trees in the summer” is a lyric that caught my ear. This is another track that shows a lot of the wasted potential that Panic At The Disco should be utilizing for their music. If they publicly apologized for their last album, I think I’d actually consider endorsing the band, especially if they were cranking songs out like this. And as of right now, I can’t help but imagine Urie sitting with a notepad, a cup of coffee, and some Cat Stevens records. Tea For The Popman!
9. “Pas De Cheval”
   Catchy, pop-country sounding. I like songs with quick lyrical progression, because they make my brain work faster than slow-churning songs. These boys have definitely been listening to some honkey tonk, or my name is Cynthia. It’s not a bad sound, but it’s a little lackluster for the pop band. Still, I could like this, possibly.
10. “The Piano Knows Something I Don’t Know”
    First off, what a clunky title. This almost feels like a rejected song from one of Tim Burton’s musical films (especially The Nightmare Before Christmas), and this is why I condemned the band for so very long, and still do. They do overdramatic well enough, but there’s a fine line between… now see, here’s the benefit of a live review of the album, things change. The song gets decent when it actually kicks in, and you actually feel like bobbing your head a bit, which isn’t much of a problem for me.
11. “Behind The Sea”
    HAND CLAPS! OH BOY! Okay, so I know Ryan Ross is supposed to sing on this song, so I guess it wasn’t him on “Northern Downpour”, but whoever is singing this song, I have to say it’s still much better than Urie’s waver. “We’re all too small to talk to God” is a strangely interesting lyric, though not “deep,” so don’t go blowing your load over it just yet. Another good little pop song, this is, and I could grow to enjoy it a bit. Thus far, this and “Northern Downpour” are my favourite tracks on the album.
12. “Folkin’ Around”
    Another two-minute song, and the sort of song I would probably put on a pop mixtape. These guys, as I said, have been listening to some country, and it shows in the fact that, if you gave Urie a Southern accent, this song would definitely be on a country station. It’s got the twangy guitar and the harmonicas for it, for Christ’s sakes! It feels a lot like a movie soundtrack when someone’s driving fast down a long winding two-lane road in the desert, where the character is contemplating his life. Take that however you will.
13. “She Had The World”
    A nice little circus tune so far. It’s light and bouncy, and you just know Urie was singing this whilst bouncing on the balls of his feet, a little too manic for his own good. Love it or hate it, you just know this guy loves being him, because it’s obvious in songs like this that he has a lot of fun being Brendan Urie of Panic At The Disco. A slightly lackluster track, truly; it could use a little more bounce to it. It’s okay just the same, however. Oh, and there’s whistling. Who doesn’t love whistling?
14. “From a Mountain in the Middle of the Cabins”
    Another fairly paint-by-numbers sounding song. Also a bit lackluster, and it just doesn’t have the same spark that the other tracks seem to have. It feels dusty and dilapidated, even with Ryan Ross’ vocals kicking in again. I imagine, if the rest of the record weren’t as bouncy, this would be a better track. I’ll make a note to listen to the song as a standalone, rather than in the full upbeat context of the record. The arrangement is good, however.
15. “Mad As Rabbits”
    “And now he drags down miles in America, briefcase in hand,” another lyric that catches my ear. Sounding a little better than the Panic At The Disco formula, though the track isn’t over just yet, it feels like a decent enough way to finish of an album. I don’t have a terrible lot to say on the track, besides the fact that it’s decent enough.

So, I’ve listened to the album, and I’ve concluded that it’s a marvelous follow-up to a completely lackluster album such as A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Brendan Urie and his motley band of miscreants have done something interesting here, by taking their bitter pop-rock lyrics and formula and essentially shitting on it, flushing it down the toilet, and saying, “Jesus, that’s a relief, now let’s get down to business!

I imagine I might get a lot of shit for giving a decent enough review to this album, but I’ve never been the kind of person to condemn a decent album just because of its maker, which you should have gotten by now, with how I named My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade the 6^th best album of 2006.

I’m going on record as saying that this is really actually… good. I don’t know what kind of shelf life the album has, or how many times I will listen to it, but I feel that it has deserved at least one more listen, and definitely a couple when the album comes out, and I can banish the terrible sound quality.

Review: Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster...

Los Campesinos!
Hold On Now, Youngster…

Wichita Recordings [2008]

As anyone who ever listens to me yell about music knows, they just don’t make good pop music like they used to. The 90s were effectively the last good decade for upbeat music, and though we have bands now like Vampire Weekend, The Apples in Stereo, and The Ditty Bops, music just doesn’t give me a shit-eating grin like it used to. You know the grin: when you wake up on Christmas morning and it’s snowing, and you swear that anyone looking at you right then could tell you if you needed to brush your back teeth better.

What a surprise it was, to me, when Now Hold On, Youngster… leaked in January. I had heard buzz about Los Campesinos! from the review site Drowned in Sound, but I had never looked for them. So, when I came across the leak of their debut record, I entered it into rotation. From the starting chords of the first track, “Death To Los Campesinos!”, I was grinning and moving around, which hadn’t happened in far, far too long.

As the album progresses on, you find more than just things to grin about, though there are plenty of things like that. The songs are rarely sung by a single person, and when they aren’t, there’s still chanting from the background (in the case of “Knee Deep At ATP” and “You! Me! Dancing!”). Frontman Gareth Campesinos! has an absurd singing voice, and doesn’t seem to care much because, to me, he sounds like he’s having the time of his life singing the songs that he’s singing.

The better part of the album comes from the tongue-in-cheek lyrics. From lines about K Records shirts at ATP (“Though underexposed, I could see from the quality his K Records tee-shirt and you holding his hand” – “Knee Deep At ATP”) to lyrics like “I’ll swap the bleeding for a bumping sensation/I’ll be ctrl-alt-deleting your face with no reservations” (“Death To Los Campesinos!”), it’s hard not to get caught on the catchy lyricism of these songs. Indeed, the best lyric comes from “We Are All Accelerated Readers”, where Gareth and Aleksandra Campesinos! converse on a conversation on which Breakfast Club character they’d be. “I’d be the one that dies,” sings Gareth, garnering the response, “No one dies,” from Aleksandra. “Well then, what’s the point?” quips Gareth in response.

The arrangement here is slightly lo-fi, but at the same time fairly grand. The aforementioned “Knee Deep At ATP” starts with a wonderfully catchy guitar section, but soon breaks, and is replaced with light guitar, drum, and the very best bit: a string section. This continues on, but is eventually swallowed up by the sea when the final part of the song hits: “They said "it's not what you like, it's what you're like as a person", Well, I need new hobbies, that's one thing for certain.”

Hopefully, when this record is released stateside, it will gain a lot more praise, and people will actually talk about it, with its witty lyricism (which I can barely speak enough about) and amazingly catchy instrumental arrangement, it would be wonderful for people to talk about really, truly high-quality pop music again.

Do The Math(s) = Three Bands + Their Predecessors

Hello friends. Whilst listening to music today (Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Vampire Weekend's self-titled), I realize that the three bands I've been most in love with, as of late, are permutations of the bands that I've always loved a great deal. I'm not THE biggest fan of saying, "Oh, they sound like Band A meets Band B," but really, these three bands work rather well for the process.

The bands:

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

And no, I'm not writing this because I just saw them live. Stephen Malkmus (Ex-Pavement frontman, and the same bored looking fellow on the far left in the first photo) and his merry band (including ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss) The Jicks, to me, have just released their best album, next to Face The Truth. The Jicks have been around for a few years, and are a well-established band, and have been making Pink Floyd-esque nerd rock since their creation.

Pavement are essentially the best band of the 90s, and the fact that Malkmus continues to make music is a testament to the willpower of a great bandleader who isn't ready to shut the fuck up. And, to be honest, I don't think it's his time to shut up, with an album like their latest, Real Emotional Trash. With its breezy fretwork and its strange pop sensibilities, Real Emotional Trash is sure to be well-remembered in the future, and for good reason.

Video: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - "Dragonfly Pie" (Live at Amoeba Music)

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Vampire Weekend

Let's go over the basics of the band: this merry band of sweater-vest wearing pop dorks met whilst attending Columbia University, and derive their sound from listening to way too much African pop music and a heavy dose of Western classical music. They've been named the best new band of the year by Spin magazine, and are the first band to be photographed for its cover before even putting out a record. Proof that the internet is sometimes a wonderful thing, Vampire Weekend has gained a nice amount of popularity due to the wildfire that is blogging.

The band is essentially what would happen if The Ramones decided it was high time they did a collaborative record with Please Please Me-era Beatles: poppy to the max, but strangely, somehow, a bit punk. I don't ever like trying to predict what band will become absolutely massive, but if I were to pick one and one alone, it would be this one, based on the steady following that the band has gained and, of course, a recent performance on Saturday Night Live, which is certainly enough to propel you at least a small amount. Mark my words, folks: these boys, given time, are going to be just as big as any of the bands that we (and most likely they) worship.

Video: Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk"

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Los Campesinos!

Another example of how blogging can propel a band to superstardom, Welsh band Los Campesinos! (and yes, the exclamation is part of the name) started by posting demos on MySpace, and helping to propel things by posting about the demos on British review site (and essentially the British answer to Pitchfork). By the time their debut was released on February 25^th, people were more than aware of the band's presence.

Mixing clever lyrics with twee (as fuck) pop sensibilities, Los Campesinos! album Hold On Now, Youngster… is a perfect example of "a grower": though it may be a little bit rough and overly-poppy (and, quite frankly, absurd) at points, given time, the album becomes something that you feel almost compelled to listen to. It's as if someone told Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian) to man up already, and what he came up with was Hold On Now, Youngster… By all means, give this band a chance, and you certainly won't be disappointed.

Video: Los Campesinos! - "Death To Los Campesinos!"