Let's be honest: If Panic! at the Disco (yes, I'm still using the exclamation point, get over it) hadn't written all those infectious dance-punk anthems three years ago, nobody would be paying attention to Pretty. Odd, their well-overdue sophomore effort. And in a way, that's sad, because this follow-up to the platinum selling A Fever You Can't Sweat Out actually has some merit to it. But mostly if you've never heard anything by The Beatles.

Hmm. On second thought, maybe it doesn't.

Part of me wants to believe this is all an elaborate "fuck you" by Panic against the folk who decried their emo-laced stabs at maturity on the last album; almost as if to say, "You want maturity? Fine, we'll show you exactly how bland maturity can be. You'll be begging for the old style back." If so, they've certainly proven their point. Pretty. Odd is a gorgeous bore.

By now you probably know the story behind this album: Panic threw out everything they'd written before locking themselves in a room with nothing but Kinks and Beach Boys records, and this is the result. Gone are the hooks and witticisms of the old record, replaced by blaring horns, slinky guitar lines, and a strange insistence on having every other song talk about the moon. Some are hailing them as innovators; in any other field, this would be known as an identity crisis.

Pretty. Odd is an album that's hard to take seriously, and the opening lyrics of "We're So Starving" are a perfect example of why: "You don't have to worry / 'cuz we're still the same band," proclaims frontman Brendon Urie. Hopefully he's trying to be ironic, because there's absolutely nothing connecting this 60's revival record to the electronica/pop-punk stylings of their debut album. Panic spends the majority of their time walking a fine line between influence and outright plagiarism, and you get the uneasy feeling with every single song that you've heard it somewhere before.

You very likely have.

Let's answer the burning question though: Is the music bad?

No, it's not bad, per se; it can't be. It's rewriting the catalogs of some of classic rock's best acts, and the Panic boys are competent enough of musicians to do it with the flair and style necessary to pass it off as their own. But the problem is it's just not them.

I'll put it another way: Gatsbys American Dream. They have a very distinct sound and style to their music - like Panic used to. Search/Rescue, a side-project to Gatsby, has a completely different sound. And that's the whole point. If Gatsby had put out Search/Rescue's The Compound as a follow-up to their self-titled 2006 album, their fans would have every right to be pissed off, because Search/Rescue's material isn't an evolution of the Gatsby sound - it's completely divorced from it. And consequently, the boys in Gatsby had enough integrity to wait for a side project to market it under.

Panic didn't. And dropping the exclamation point doesn't count.

That's what gets under my skin about Pretty. Odd. It feels like a personal indulgence without the confidence to stand on its own merits. Panic put together a fan base by delivering a debut album people loved, and now they're riding on reputation while disowning what made them loved in the first place, as though they're embarrassed of it.

So you know what? Let's let them disown it.

Let's pretend Panic! at the Disco's first album never even happened for the remainder of this review. As far as I'm concerned, this is a new group releasing their inexplicably anticipated debut album. What do we have then?

Well, Pretty. Odd is still what I said before: a gorgeous bore. The arrangements are lavish and layered, perfectly emulating the bands being aped on the record, but very few stick in your head after the last notes fade. The album is strongest at the outset: "Nine in the Afternoon's" jangly piano and tightly wound guitars are memorable enough to justify its pick as the album's first single, and "She's a Handsome Women" has attitude to spare, with a cartoonishly wicked instrumental hook that leads into a rousing chorus. For a minute, you almost believe Panic has found itself a new niche.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album unfolds as a performance piece haphazardly modeled in the 60's motif, where every song just sounds like the boys are covering a different band. "Do You Know What I'm Seeing?" and "That Green Gentleman" are both whimsical romps that lead into the ukulele-driven travesty of "I Have Friends in Holy Spaces" - a two-minute circus jam that has absolutely no redeeming quality. You'll be thankful the production purposefully muffles the track, trust me. Once that's done, the album just meanders through familiar territory, ripping off the Beatles wholesale in "Behind The Sea" and every bluegrass group to ever put out a record in "Folkin' Around." There's no denying that Panic really, really wants this album to be the next Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Only problem is, someone already made it.

Here's what it comes down to: If you want to talk purely musical aesthetics, the songs are decent. Some are quite enjoyable, in fact. But this just isn't Panic! at the Disco. In the effort to make every track distinct and distance itself from the embarrassment that is "emo", Pretty. Odd is a slapdash menagerie of musical whimsy, refusing to deliver the kind of infectiousness we've come to expect from Panic. It's an exquisite charade, but a charade nonetheless. So if you're going to give this nostalgic novelty a chance, take Urie's words with a grain of salt: They are definitely not the same band anymore.

Reviewed by Dan Lifschitz