{"id":3440,"date":"2011-08-18T22:53:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T05:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3440"},"modified":"2011-08-18T22:53:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T05:53:07","slug":"panic-at-the-disco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/panic-at-the-disco\/","title":{"rendered":"PANIC! AT THE DISCO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

PANIC! AT THE DISCO<\/h1>\n

No need for alarm\u2014the synth-popsters have returned to the dance floor<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When Panic! At the Disco\u00a0announced in July 2009 that it was reinserting the exclamation point it had dropped from its name the previous year, there were two ways to read the news. One: The Las Vegas band really was panicking. This would have been understandable, given that bassist Jon Walker and guitarist and primary lyricist Ryan Ross had just quit, leaving singer-guitarist Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith to carry on as a duo. Fortunately, the other, more optimistic interpretation\u2014that Urie and Smith were starting fresh and affirming that one of the decade\u2019s most successful rock groups wasn\u2019t finished\u2014turned out to be correct. The proof came in March, when Panic! At the Disco released the long-awaited Vices & Virtues<\/em>, the band\u2019s third album and its first written entirely by Urie and Smith. \u201cIt definitely took some time to figure out exactly what we wanted to do,\u201d Smith acknowledges. \u201cEven though it was still Panic, it felt like a new band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with producers John Feldmann and Butch Walker, Urie and Smith struggled to find their sound\u2014but they did know they wanted to recapture the spirit of their debut, 2005\u2019s multiplatinum A Fever You Can\u2019t Sweat Out<\/em>. Smith recalls that in the group\u2019s early days, the members felt a sense of musical freedom. They paired punk guitars and pop melodies with synthesizer licks and dance beats, never thinking their hyperactive, hyper-emotional sound would help define alternative rock for the MySpace era. \u201cOn our first record, that was the mentality: Anything was allowed,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThere was no pressure. Any musical style was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

On its follow-up, the band opted for what Smith calls a more \u201cconfined\u201d approach, allowing their budding enthusiasm for \u201960s psychedelic rock to lead them down the rabbit hole of Pretty.<\/em> Odd<\/em>., a Sgt. Pepper-style concept record. Vices & Virtues<\/em> retains some of those retro elements, but Urie and Smith mostly dust off the synths and deliver gigantic\u00a0arena-emo choruses like the one heard on the lead single \u201cThe Ballad of Mona Lisa.\u201d \u201cOne album got it out of our system,\u201d Smith says. \u201cWe were still 20-somethings, and we were naturally going through the changes that you go through, finding new bands and new music you get really excited about. It\u2019s gotten to a point where we\u2019re not changing as drastically or as quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PANIC! AT THE DISCO No need for alarm\u2014the synth-popsters have returned to the dance floor When Panic! At the Disco\u00a0announced in July 2009 that it was reinserting the exclamation point it had dropped from its name the previous year, there were two ways to read the news. One: The Las Vegas band really was panicking. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[1807,2406,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3442,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions\/3442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}