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Product description ------------------- Brand New BBC Review ---------- A lot has changed since Panic! at the Disco’s debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, tumbled into record stores in 2005. The term emo has transitioned from a critic-hated rock sub-genre involving heartbroken groups such as Jimmy Eat World and Weezer, evolving to become an easily identifiable stereotype featured on Coronation Street. Amid a tabloid-incited moral panic, emo’s two front-runners became global success stories: My Romance, with their Black Parade shaking stadiums, and Panic!, who headlined the Other Stage at Glastonbury in 2008. Twelve months later, though, they were reduced to the duo of singer/multi-instrumentalist Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith, following the departure of guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker. Ross surmised the musical differences thus: "Brendon's more of a Peter Gabriel fan, and I'm more of a Ray Davies fan." But departures appear to be something this band thrives upon. 2008’s Pretty. Odd. saw them switch off the neon-glow of Fever… for rustic acoustic vibes courtesy of writing sessions at Topanga Canyon. And album three finds Panic! riding their crazy horse back to the Duran Duran-ish land of their two-million-selling debut, revealing how much they always had in common with fellow Las Vegans, The Killers. However, synthesisers don’t dominate so much as wrestle with a cavalcade of tender strings and high-octane riffs. From the opening chimes of The Ballad of Mona Lisa to the a-ha-tinged strings of Memories, Vices & Virtues is a breath-taking voyage, which ends in the brilliantly bonkers baroque stomp of Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met...). Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind) is a summer anthem in waiting, featuring a glorious breakdown where a simmering synth shimmers away akin to The Who’s Teenage Wasteland before erupting, not unlike The Temper Trap channelling U2. Elsewhere, Foo Fighters choruses jostle beside an almost Bowie-like appetite for the entire smorbord of pop sounds. Over-emoted lines like "I could forgive the way her tears taste" are forgivable because Vices & Virtues marks a bravely adroit leap for the remaining members of Panic! at the Disco. If MCR and Panic!’s arrival signalled a changing of the rock’n’roll guard, then this outfit’s splintering has sledge-hammered a new benchmark in the genre’s history. Seemingly, emo is no longer a moody sub-culture, as one can’t help but smile when a record is this brilliantly bombastic.