Unless you’ve released all your music on limited edition wax cylinder, are on official record as having used your facial muscles to execute a smile more often than punctuation marks in the last year, and definitely haven’t filled out a character questionnaire and left it lying around for the world to see in an act of confused vanity recently, you are likely to be labelled a child of the My Space generation. There’s nothing you can do about it. And we’re losing track of the amount of new groups being banded around as the first birth since the revolution, with press officers aplenty clutching a pair of scissors and salivating cross-eyed on their hands and knees on the blood-splattered floor of the delivery room. Panic! At The Disco go a step further, supplementing the hyperbole by wrapping their own lips firmly around the proverbial damp trumpet and blowing a whole song out of it; “We’re just a wet-dream for the web scene! Make a scene! Make a scene!” trill they in standard emo voice 3 on ‘London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines’ (yes, we kid you not, and promise this isn’t a Liars record). And treading a soggy path from their My Space, they bloody well are you know.
But popular culture, near and past, is littered with examples of why the general public at large should never be allowed to make decisions (did you *see* the Brits this year!? And Chris De Burgh? Explain that if you can). But to start on a positive note, Panic! At The Disco are a burst of pressurised fresh oxygen in the carbon dioxide flavoured world of emo rock. They’ve got an exclamation mark in their name (which in itself sounds like a Morrissey lyric with a flashing codpiece)! Their artwork is constructed of saucy quasi-Medieval puppetry rather than 4 ashen middle-class teenagers with jet-blackened hair staring into the middle distance like a passing piece of tumbleweed just outwitted them! And they got computers! With which they actually engage in activities other than ‘social networking’. Sometimes.
They are, on the one hand, see, like every other emo band that has ever been; strangled vocals, one-size-fits-all guitars worn like a suit of armour to protect against the advancing, misunderstanding world. On the other clenched fist they’re a dynamic, electrically-loaded beast riding a millennial surfboard under dramatic skies. So ‘The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage’ (despite not nearly living up to its potentially awesome title) gives way to a tense, punishing bout of no-holds-barred Faint-esque electronica and, working itself back to ground level, stops short of making nu-metal’s mistakes with genre splicing. Through ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ and ‘I Constantly Thank God For Esteban’ this dynamic continues to feel fairly impulsive, muscular and modern, but taking a wider view of the whole record, this secret weapon is played haphazardly at best and it feels like a wasted opportunity when they revert to the usual for ‘Comisado’ and others. They feel more exciting than they actually are, but there’s no disputing that they stand apart. And that’s probably still worth telling your ‘friends’ about.