Neon Circus - Don't Get Panicked Album Review

What is Neon Circus?

That's a good question. In simple terms, they're part pretentious indie rock, part punk, part disco, all blended up with a big thick dollop of britrock.

And truth be told, this album isn't bad at all. Intro track "This Way Up" is a bit of a mess, with instruments from all over the world struggling to find their place in an uncomfortable mess of Sitar, dreamy pads and lord knows what else, but it's over quickly and Segues nicely into "Solar Static", which opens the door to Neon Circus' The Automatic influenced disco-punk, and the sound is actually quite refreshing. True enough, it's not like there's no-one in the world who sound like them, but they do what they do well, and that's not something to be sniffed at.

Writing a good pop song that doesn't sound saccharine sweet is a dark art nowadays, and I could imagine tracks like "The Scene" being played (And danced to) at my local indie night, and it's not a huge stretch of the imagination to imagine any of the tracks on this disk charting reasonably well given the right push.

Of course, it's not all roses: The vocal delivery begins to grate after a while; that strained, clipped style so popular at the moment doesn't exactly compliment the rest of the music at times, and occasionally the tracks end up sounding like remixes of themselves, which is very much not a good thing - although whether that's the fault of the performers or the person responsible for mixing the album is probably a debatable point. A few tracks also out-stay their welcome, being a little longer than they should be, this results in the album starting to feel a little samey after a while.

All in all, Neon Circus have done well. This release is their debut album, and while there's room for refinement many bands still have that room for refinement years into their career. Neon Circus are a young band, and with the knowledge that experience brings, they could one day be a force to be reckoned with. Expect more from them one day; when they find that killer single or that fully fleshed out second album (And they're not far off now), they'll be huge.

Chris Spann