The Young Veins, Take A Vacation!

To anyone paying attention to Panic at the Disco's 2008 sophomore album Pretty. Odd., the Zombified harmonies and loose Byrdsian jangle of ex-Panic members Ryan Ross and Jon Walker's debut as the Young Veins shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The thing is, hardly anyone was paying attention to Panic at the Disco's 2008 sophomore album, and those who were mostly fell under the age of 17, hoping for more of that group's high-drama eyeliner emo and ending up instead with a saucer full of secrets, an album better suited to their parents' stereos than their own. As for those parents: How could they tell their friends with a straight face that their new favorite band used to have an exclamation point in the middle of their name? In short, Panic became emblematic of the dilemma that faced fellow former mall champs Fall Out Boy and is currently facing ought-to-be arena slayers Paramore: How do you broaden your horizons and develop as an artist when most of your intended audience is convinced you're writing music for kids?

For Ross and Walker, the solution lay in jumping ship and changing names — and if the various members of Young Veins' PR camp are wise, they'll keep the connection to Panic confessed, but underplayed. That's because Take A Vacation, as its breezy, pinwheeling title implies, is summer music from the Summer of Love, a record as far from the food court stage as any self-respecting vinyl junkie ought to be. It's not for nothing that the first song on the album is called "Change" and opens with a big, booming chord, just like the Beatles' "Help." Ross's voice is perfectly suited to this retro-pop backdrop: It's lean and aching, darting needlelike through the glimmering tapestry of guitars. The trick the Veins pull on Vacation — in addition to full-on reinvention — is managing to make a record convincingly inspired by classic rock without simply resorting to empty homage. "Cape Town" soars along on a "Be My Baby" backbeat and church bell guitar lick, Ross quickly moving through Dylan's Four Stages of Romance in the chorus: "I saw you/ I met you/ I loved you / I left you," each phrase a melodic and emotional step-down from the one before it. "Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won't" rollicks along like a barrel of Monkees, barroom piano and four-part harmonies holding up the scenery.

As much as Vacation owes to its '60s forbears, indie rock lifers will hear undeniable echoes of the early sound of the Elephant Six collective — specifically, the Apples in Stereo and Of Montreal, version 1.0. The title track could have been ghostwritten by Kevin Barnes, so charming is its rollercoaster melody line and calliope-like instrumentation. Ditto the melancholy "Everyone But You," where Ross laments, "A part of you left the room/ I am left talking to the apple" — which is either Gay Parade-style surrealism or the slyest embedded Beatles reference of the last 10 years. Take a Vacation is the sound of a band doing reinvention right, scrapping the foundation and starting over from square one. It also offers a hint at how to bridge that pesky commercial divide: Parents are fond of insisting music was better in their day, kids go endlessly to bat for their contemporary heroes. Vacation suggests they may both have a point.