Watch an interview with Panic At The Disco backstage at BBC Switch's Sound over at
bbc.co.uk.
(youtube.com)

Rolling Stone - April 3, 2008

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This is an excerpt from the DVD, do not watch if you don't want to be spoiled.

The red-haired girl at the bar is having a crisis: she has been declared too young to buy alcohol and furiously hurls an apparently bogus ID card on the bar. Another youth adopts a more philosophical approach: “I’ve come to the conclusion I won’t get served.” Spiky, furious - and that is just their hairstyles - these are typical of Panic At the Disco’s young emo crowd. However, their favourite band seem to be making plans for when everybody grows up. Having dispensed with their name’s exclamation mark and shows featuring contortionists, the Las Vegas quartet are maturing with normal clothes and music influenced by 1960s pop. They even cover country-rock anthem The Weight by the Band with an assurance that is perhaps not entirely appreciated by a crowd who cheerily pelt them with glow-sticks.


Still, this gig is a fascinating example of a band’s ability to challenge their own audience and take them somewhere else. Punk remains in Panic’s stick thin frames and singer Brendan Urie’s resemblance to a youthful Henry Rollins (if it is possible to imagine the notorious iron-pumper squeezed into anything as effete as winkle pickers). However, their piano-plonking anthems are simultaneously bubblegum and mature: a blend of Billy Joel and the Monkees.

Although the audience are happiest slam-dancing to songs about “kids in the street”, the band’s more polished material is still sung back at them by a crowd who are not outfoxed by complicated lyrics about rites of passage and near-death experiences. Youthful, tuneful, but with subtlety and emerging depth, Panic are a band for that moment when teenage enthusiasm dips into adulthood’s tendency to cry into your beer. Admittedly, if you do not have any beer to cry into, this can present a problem.



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Back in 2005, Panic were on the cusp. Barely a year earlier they’d been signed by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz on the strength of a handful of songs he had heard on the internet.

Their debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, went on to sell more than 2 million copies, ­setting the Las Vegas foursome on the path to becoming the poster boys for baroque emo.

Theirs is the sort of music that polarised. There were those who held up their genre-splicing rock theatricality as the latest frontier.

But equally the boys ­inspired a hail of plastic ­bottles at Reading Festival in 2006, one of which knocked-out singer Brendon Urie.

After 18 months of touring and some down time to “get domesticated again, buy houses, get dogs”, PATD decamped to a Nevada cabin to write. “Last January we had about six songs and it was sort of a story I was writing,” ­recalls Ross. “But it was becoming more of a chore than a pleasure, so we stopped.”


The boys scrapped the sessions and started afresh. Their previous album was a flurry of Chuck Palahniuk-referencing lyrics revolving around heartbreak and betrayal with enough syllables to make Dizzee’s jaw drop.

The follow-up is a sonically extravagant Sgt. Peppers-style trip, complete with harmonies, big brass and not a synthesizer in earshot. And the tone? It’s resolutely jaunty. “During the first album we were just angsty teenagers,” nods Urie. “There were a lot of hormones – we were pouting throughout the whole thing!”

Jon adds: “We just grew up and realised there’s more important stuff than the girl that cheated on you four years ago.”

They look a totally different group too. Skinny jeans, feather cuts and artfully applied man make-up have been replaced with an American Gothic-meets-Mormon vibe.

When levelled with this suggestion and handed a copy of the iconic 1930s painting, Ross exclaims, “Do I look like this?” pointing an accusatory finger before crumpling it up in mock disgust. “They look Amish.”

“Exactly,” says Urie. “This record is a bit more Amish.”

Not that this new look or sound will do anything to dampen the ardour of their fans, in particular the ladies. There’s an infamous video on YouTube completely dedicated to Urie’s posterior. It is so popular, its creator has just posted a sequel . “Really? There’s a slideshow of my ass?” asks an ­incredulous Urie.

“He put that together for Jon,” quips Ross.

“That wasn’t supposed to get out! ” replies Urie.

“For the record, me and Brendon are not dating,” pipes up Jon.

“Are you still trying to quash the gay rumours?” Ross retorts.

“We weren’t until we started talking about Brendon sending me nudie pictures!” cries Urie.

Honda Civic Tour

04/10 - Warfield - San Francisco, CA SOLD OUT
04/11 - Warfield - San Francisco, CA NEWLY ADDED
04/12 - Soma - San Diego, CA
04/13 - Mesa Amphitheatre - Phoenix, AZ
04/15 - Brady Theatre - Oklahoma City, OK
04/17 - Thomas Assembly Center at Louisiana Tech - Ruston, LA
04/18 - Palladium Ballroom - Dallas, TX
04/19 - Stubb's BBQ - Austin, TX
04/20 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre - Houston, TX
04/22 - Ruth Eckerd Hall - Tampa, FL
04/23 - The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theatre - Miami, FL
04/24 - House of Blues Orlando - Orlando, FL SOLD OUT
04/25 - House of Blues Orlando - Orlando, FL NEWLY ADDED
04/26 - The Tabernacle - Atlanta, GA SOLD OUT
04/27 - The Tabernacle - Atlanta, GA NEWLY ADDED
04/29 - House of Blues Myrtle Beach - Myrtle Beach, SC
04/30 - Constitution Hall - Washington, DC
05/02 - Alfond Arena at the University of Maine - Orono, ME
05/03 - RPI Field House - Troy, NY
05/04 - The Bamboozle Festival - East Rutherford, NJ NEWLY ADDED
05/06 - Gordon Fieldhouse Rochester Institute of Technology - Rochester, NY
05/07 - Roseland Ballroom - New York, NY SOLD OUT
05/08 - Roseland Ballroom - New York, NY NEWLY ADDED
05/09 - Festival Pier - Philadelphia, PA
05/10 - Chevrolet Theatre - Wallingford, CT
05/11 - Bank of America Pavilion - Boston, MA
05/13 - Metropolis - Montreal, QC
05/14 - The Sound Academy - Toronto, ON
05/16 - Tower City Amphitheatre - Cleveland, OH
05/17 - PromoWest-Outdoor (LCPavilion) - Columbus, OH
05/18 - Egyptian Room atMurat Centre - Indianapolis, IN
05/20 - The Fillmore Theatre - Detroit, MI
05/23 - Congress Theatre - Chicago, IL SOLD OUT
05/24 - Congress Theatre - Chicago, IL NEWLY ADDED
05/25 - Eagles Ballroom - Milwaukee, WI
05/27 - Myth - Minneapolis, MN
05/30 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO
05/31 - Westfair Amphitheatre - Omaha, NE
06/01 - Uptown Theatre - Kansas City, MO
06/03 - The Fillmore Auditorium - Denver, CO
06/04 - Salt Air Theatre - Salt Lake City, UT
06/06 - PNE Forum - Vancouver, BC
06/07 - Paramount Theatre - Seattle, WA
06/08 - Portland Exposition Center - Portland, OR
06/10 - Grand Theatre at Grand Sierra Resort - Reno, NV NEWLY ADDED
06/13 - The Pearl - Las Vegas, NV
06/14 - The Theater at the Honda Center - Anaheim, CA