PANIC! AT THE DISCO / A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (2005)

I remember loving this. At the time, it was the Fall Out Boy album that Fall Out Boy didn't make. Now I find it...wait for it... annoyingly inconsistent. More inconsistent than FOB themselves. I see you there waiting to say that that's fitting. I. SEE. YOU. They're capable of staying above 50%. I'd now argue that Brendon manages the upper teens, AT BEST. At least he knows how to pick singles. Someday there'll be a greatest hits album worth owning. Some of these songs are just way too camp-clever for their own good. It's tiresome to hear him wax about Victorian-Era-Behind-The-Curtains nonsense at length. Small doses.

Songs of Note: Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off; I Write Sins Not Tragedies

2 Sincere Wishes That This Is Gospel Had Been Written By Someone Else out of 5

PANIC! AT THE DISCO / Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die (2013)

Panic at the Disco’s early career was spent as musical doppelgangers whose portrayals varied widely in effectiveness. They were exquisite as b-string Fall Out Boys and aggravatingly inconsistent as faux mop-tops. On their latest album, it feels as if Brendon has spent too much time turning knobs in the studio when he should have had someone twiddling the one in his pants. There are interesting bleeps and bloops throughout, but lyrically he blows his load on the first track only to let the album chug generically along until it wheezes to a particularly disappointing stop.

I realize it isn’t fair to expect them to always be FOB dlc, but this is (mostly) trash, regardless.

Songs of Note: This Is Gospel; Miss Jackson

1 Shout Out to Someone Horribly Missed out of 5