Panic At The Disco: Pretty. Odd.

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