By Cortney Harding
NEW YORK (Billboard) -
Given the radical image changes that
Panic at the Disco has undergone in the past year, it's hard
not to read the lyrics to its new album's opening song as a
pre-emptive strike against critics.
"Oh, how it's been so long/we're so sorry we've been
gone/we were busy writing songs/for you," bassist Jon Walker
sings, by way of apology for the two-and-a-half-year lag
between 2005's "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" and the new
"Pretty. Odd.," due March 25 via Fueled by Ramen/Atlantic.
Then, he launches into lines meant to comfort fans who have
no doubt noticed that their favorite band now looks less like
Queen and more like the Kinks: "You don't have to worry cause
we're still the same band."
Lyricist/guitarist Ryan Ross describes the song as "a
lighthearted way to make an important statement." But despite
Ross' insistence that things in Panic-land are business as
usual, the fact is, a number of things have changed since the
band burst on the scene in 2005, resplendent in layers of
makeup and surrounded by circus performers.
The band shed one member (bassist Brent Wilson) and
replaced him with Walker. The members traded their Hedi
Slimane-style black suits for vests, cravats and floral
patterns.
And perhaps most crucially, they toned down the bombastic,
glammy sound of their first record, replacing it with a
stripped-down approach that, at times, recalls the Beatles and
Bright Eyes.
But it was that bombastic, glammy sound that made them
stars in the first place. And with Panic at the Disco's history
being so tied to it, will it be easy to shed?
MAKING THE BAND
John Janick, president of independent label Fueled by
Ramen, was introduced to Panic by Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz,
who has his own imprint, Decaydance, through Fueled by Ramen.
"(Wentz told) me I had to come to L.A. to check out this
new band that had contacted him online," Janick says. "I went
and hung out with them, listened to some songs and signed them.
At that point, they had never even played a show and were still
in high school. We waited until they graduated, then flew them
to (Washington) D.C. to make the record."
Realizing that he was dealing with a band that had almost
no fan base, Janick sent it on the road with Fall Out Boy and
set about coordinating an online campaign. Using sites like
MySpace and PureVolume, both of which are popular with Fall Out
Boy's key demographic, he started to build a grassroots effort,
aligning the new band with the more established one.
That clip, an over-the-top production that featured the
Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, premiered January 17, 2006,
on MTV's "TRL." The video was the first time many viewers saw
Panic, and it was crucial in establishing the visuals that
would be associated with the band. For the remainder of 2006,
the band sold out theaters before embarking on an arena tour.
The accompanying stage sets and visuals were splashy and
intricate; shows featured ballerinas and acrobats, while
Panic's members went through so much makeup that MAC Cosmetics
offered to set them up with a supply of eyeliner in exchange
for an endorsement.
They released a series of big-budget videos, again
depicting the members as something straight out of the Moulin
Rouge, culminating in the band taking home MTV's video of the
year award for "Sins" in 2006. Two months prior, "Fever" had
peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200, before being certified
platinum a month later. To date, it has sold 1.67 million
copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
INTO THE WOODS
After its banner year in 2006, Panic retreated to a cabin
in the woods in early 2007 to begin work on its follow-up. Ross
describes the initial effort as "a short story set to music. I
was mostly working on it by myself, and while the other guys
liked it, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be."
Janick says the band did some rough recordings in April and
May, but by June, it was clear that it wanted to change
direction. "Those recordings are on the shelf," Janick says
when asked if they would ever be released as B-sides or fan
specials. "And because the quality of the recording isn't that
great, they will probably stay on the shelf."
"Obi-Wan living in the desert," says he heard the lost record
and that it sounded like "a bizarre musical about wolves. It
felt a bit forced."
The death of that project, Ross says, "gave me a lot of
insight. It became easier to move forward after that was done."
Ross adopted the Beatles as his new role models for the next
take on the second Panic album. "They weren't afraid to try
things and do what they wanted to do," he says.
"We wanted to grow, and we were really over the circus
theme at that point," he continues. "We went out in the woods
and got new clothes and all grew beards. Jon and (frontman)
Brendon (Urie) wrote songs for the record, and it became more
of a band effort and less about me."
In the summer of 2007, Panic took the opportunity to try
out new songs, performing them at several festivals around
Europe. For a band whose garish live show had been its staple,
it also took a risk by performing, as Wentz puts it, "wearing
flannel shirts and jeans. They looked like they were coming out
to do covers of the Band."
PUNCTUATION MATTERS
Performing looking like Pearl Jam circa 1993 was the band's
first airing of its new self, and the next step it took was
dramatic in its own way. After two years of being officially
known as "Panic! at the Disco," the band removed the
exclamation point from its name.
"We ruined a lot of MySpace names with that move," Urie
says sarcastically. "You look silly now if your MySpace name is
John! at the Disco."
The fans who haunt the band's MySpace and Facebook pages
noticed the change and took to the forums to engage in some
grammatically incorrect debates, with an even split between
those calling the band a sellout and those writing off the
minor change as harmless. Wentz compares the change to "when
Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC. At the end of
the day, it's still chicken."
For the band, at least, the decision was seeped in meaning.
"Dropping the exclamation point was our way of drawing a line
in the sand," Ross says. "We have a new record and we feel like
a new band. We were all tired of it, and we went ahead and got
rid of it."
"This is going to be like when Kiss took of their makeup,"
Wentz says. "At the end of 2006, Panic had really just become
too known for their look and the circus visual.
"As artists, they had to reinvent themselves," he
continues. "Otherwise you hit a glass ceiling. When I signed
them, Brendon was 17 and he didn't have much life experience.
He came to see me in California and stayed up all night because
he was so excited about not having his parents tell him to go
to bed."
"I have spent time thinking about how our fans will respond
to this," Ross says. "But a lot of them are close to our age,
and they have also changed between being 18 and 22. I honestly
believe our fans are going to grow with us. They will see that
this is a natural evolution and not something calculated."
Noting that "it's important for us to reinvent our sound
and our visual," Urie adds, "We were really young when we wrote
the first record, and that teenage angst paid off well. But we
are happy with the music and with the place we are in. In a
weird way, this feels like another first record."
Reuters/Billboard
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