Panic At The Disco - 'That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)'
Panic at the Disco blah blah no exclamation mark blah blah blah new musical direction blah maturity and depth blah blah fan reaction blah. Let us speak of that no more. Here is the new single by a band called Panic At The Disco, who I am going to pretend I know nothing about because otherwise there's a severe danger of this ending up like every other thing written about them in the last six months. I'm not even going to mention the strange echo in the "we used to be compared to Fall Out Boy, now we're compared to the Beatles" statement that seems to crop up a lot when you consider the press surrounding FOB's last album. Well, not again, anyway.
Right then. Let's have a look at the song or rather the video theretofore:
Whoops, rather wrote too soon there, didn't I? Turns out the whole song's about changing, the video's about growing up and facing criticism and, err, that's about all you can say about it. Like the rest of 'Pretty. Odd.' it's pleasant enough (it actually has virtually the same tune as '9 In The Afternoon') in a cute sort of time-between-albums Beatles covers download-only EP way but it's not quite a finished song, somehow.
It's very charming, whimsical and rather lovely as a band enjoying being a band and putting out something that they created totally for their own amusement but it doesn't necessarily work as a 'proper' single. A curio, yes, a little offcut from an album that you come back to again and again because it's so sweet but nothing particularly special, were it not made by international superstar Ryan Ross and the other three.
In other words, it screams 'B-Sides & Rarities'. Which, whilst not something you could say about every song, isn't entirely complimentary, either.
This is a song about change and it sounds like change, too. the gentle melody, the lilt of the rhythm, it's all comforting and gentle, welcoming. Soothing songs have great merit, for all the fact Feeder get maligned a lot, there's not a huge number of people who could argue with the beauty of 'Comfort In Sound,' for instance and 'comfort-rock' is a genre many people can relate to the idea of and which this song treads around the edges of.
It eases you into whatever the change Panic are undergoing is but it is the process, not the result. Bands who wildly switch their styles around often go through a series of messy changes before they hit on the perfect cocktail of all their incarnations and this feels like Panic are doing that. It's lovely, really but it's not great and it's not something that would be released or gather attention if it wasn't by an already-famous band.
Download: Out now
CD Released: June 16th
(Hazel Robinson)
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