Pretty. Good.

My experience of this band prior to listening to their new album goes as follows: 1. Seeing their name on the t-shirts of many a child with too much hair on the front of their head (you know the ones I mean) and in dire need of a good old fashioned bath. 2. (and it ends at 2) Watching them being unceremoniously pelted with bottles of an unnamed yellow liquid at the Reading Festival.

So I wasn’t best pleased when I saw this record arrive for my attention - I had little grounds to suggest I would be anything other than horrified. But being an open minded, well rounded journalist is what landed me this prestigious gig with Three’s A Crowd, so here goes.

Being fair, this Las Vegas four-piece are not nearly as dreadful as I had thought they must surely be. Certainly not openly peltable. Front man Brendon Urie has something of an irritating emo drawl, but musically they are a perfectly workable outfit.

Recent single Nine In The Afternoon has been thoroughly lapped up by mainstream radio, and on further investigation, it seems this is no great surprise either. Did you know their first album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, sold over 2 million copies? No, nor did I. They’re really no jesters after all. Tunes like That Green Gentleman and Northern Downfall are as radio friendly as the aforementioned single, and the album as a whole is really not bad.

What’s difficult is trying to place quite where they fit in. They are at times a bit emo, but at others far too soft to be anything of the sort. As a result of this ambiguity, they sit in something of a no man’s land. But if it sells records for them, then it can be classed as a winning formula.

Moral of the story - never assume. Kids and Reading Festival crowds can’t always tell the full story.