Panic At The Disco Still Know How To Put On A Big Show

ARTIST: Panic At The Disco TITLE: “Nine In The Afternoon” WEB DEBUT: Jan. 28, 2008

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: They’ve stripped the punctuation from their name and taken to covering The Band in concert, but Panic At The Disco haven’t completely given up their tendencies toward hopped-up showmanship, if their new single is to be believed. One wonders just how often A Night At The Opera got played on the band’s bus, because “Nine In The Afternoon” sounds like a drama-club-produced Queen homage, complete with instantly hummable melody, swooping-from-the-skies choir, and big orchestral breakdown at the end. Sure, there’s no way that Brendon Urie can hit the high notes or command a stage like Freddie Mercury, but his syllables-per-second quotient has been cut by about 50% since the band’s last album, which does show that he’s at least trying to grow beyond the “watch me stuff my entire Livejournal into one song” stage of frontmanship. Whether this will translate into an album’s worth of material that won’t need contortionists and fire-eaters to distract from it in a live setting remains to be seen, but color me cautiously optimistic.

Panic At The Disco [MySpace]