Neon Trees - Picture Show

This band has a fairly large job ahead of themselves in following up their debut and the solid singles released from Habits. Neon Trees kicks gets off on the right foot with "Moving In The Dark" a solid pop rock songs that has a great groove and a catchy chorus. The albums first single is astounding with its glorious chorus and uber catchy melody. This is a great pop rock song from what is turning out to be a great band.

The excellent new wave synth pop of "Mad Love" follows that glorious single and reminds me of all the great things about Men Without Hats. Yes Men Without Hats had lots of greatness. Back to Picture Show and this album keeps within the modern wave of bands who are reinterpreting the alternative, new wave, new romantic sounds of bands like Psychedelic Furs, Thompson Twins, Modern English, XTC or even The Jam to some degree. Just listen to "Weekend" and if you can't hear all of those bands influence on Neon Trees songwriting you are daft of musical knowledge.

The visceral dance groove of "Lessons In Love (All Day, All Night)" is immediately familiar like you've been listening to this since the mid 80's. The song includes Kaskade and she's nearly invisible on the track so none of that sticking out like a sore thumb in a featuring role on this track and I prefer that sort of performance more so than not. The album is very chill oriented for a few tracks but picks back up with "Hooray For Hollywood" and it's a decent track but lacks a little something, nice try but it's more of a foul ball than anything.

It's as if the band forgot who they were and tried to be the Killers on the back half of the album. I'm not impressed about that change of direction to be honest. You get to a point where the songs begin to just pass by unnoticed and until the concluding track "I Am The DJ" you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between most of the music in last five or six songs. But I really like the closing number and it's going to be one of the tunes from this album to make it to my I-Pod which is where only the good stuff goes and stays. Overall this album is good because the front lead-in is strong and the last song is very good.