Panic! At The Disco Are AboutTo Induce A Fever

Thu 20th Apr, 2006 in Features

The story of Panic! at the Disco’s rapid fire rise to fame reads like a modern-day rock’n’roll fairytale. Once upon a time it was years of hard slog and playing shows to pay the rent, just waiting for your big break that was the standard anecdote. But in a brave new musical world where purevolume and myspace can make or break you, add 4 four parts trendy haircuts to generous talent and inspiration, combine with a punk rock kid who is lucky enough to have his own ‘lil record label, and voila! You have Panic! at the Disco.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is all too easy. This is something that the band well know, with constant pressure to prove that they deserve the break. Given the opportunity to chat to Panic! drummer Spencer Smith, I asked him just how their fairytale has affected the band.

“We get a lot of crap, about how we never ‘paid our dues’ by playing hundreds of local shows to five kids and stuff like that before we got signed. But we wouldn’t want to be that band, I don’t think anyone really wants to be that band, playing for years and touring in a crappy van and not really getting anywhere. How does that make you any better?”

After playing major festival dates and support gigs in the US, it wouldn’t appear to have disadvantaged the band too greatly. “Maybe we would have liked to have played like, at least one show to a smaller crowd before we got signed. We just had to get used to it a lot quicker. But a lot of the people who say that kinda stuff, when you look at them, they’re actually in a band that’s been working as a local band for years and it’s a jealousy thing. But if you go and listen to their bands, they’re just actually not that good!”

There is certainly a lot for struggling musicians out there to be jealous about. Panic! at the Disco find their roots in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a scene that provided little opportunity for a young band such as themselves. It was little more than happy coincidence that ensured P!atD their big break. Peter Wentz, bassist for soft-core sensations Fall Out Boy (and more recently of ‘naked pictures on the internet’ fame), decided against his normal inclination to listen to a demo that some kids had posted on his livejournal. Instantly realising their potential, he drove from LA where he was recording an album with FOB, to the Nevada Desert to hear Panic! practice, and virtually signed them on the spot.

“The whole thing with Pete was just completely unexpected, we posted the link on his livejournal, but we didn’t really expect anything. When we’ve spoken to him since, he’s actually said that he sees heaps of these links to people’s purevolume or myspace that he normally never follows. But for some reason he decided to listen to ours this one day, and from there he sent us an e-mail and organised to come see us practice.”

“The first time he came and drove to see one of our band practices, and asked us things like how old are you guys, what are your plans, etcetera. It was stressful at the time, because we really quickly had to make these huge decisions like ‘Should I drop out of school?’ or ‘Do I want to go to college?’. And also, they had signed us on the basis of the two songs we had written, so then we were saying to ourselves ‘Does that mean they want us to write another 10 songs exactly the same as these?’”

Fortunately, an album of stock-standard songs was not what their new label Decaydence, an imprint of Fueled By Ramen records, had in mind. A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out is every bit as relentless as the title would indicate. Complex, skilfully orchestrated and brimming with enormous potential, the 13 tracks weave sarcastic and creative lyricism with eclectic musical samples and bold production techniques.

In my opinion, Panic! sound like everything you could want Vegas to be. 1920s burlesque ditties collide with futuristic synth samples and drum machine beats. Glitter, sequins, cocktails, and the seedy undertow of the bright lights and cheap thrills are encapsulated in Brendon Urie’s strong vocal and the tongue-in-cheek wit of lyricist and guitarist Ryan Ross. But these guys have turned difficult to define into an art form, leaving a trail across the web and through the press of greatly varying reviews.

“Honestly, we always say now when people ask us that we’re a rap-rock band [they’re not even nearly, I promise, he’s being facetious], because I don’t really think it means a thing any more. Look at how many bands get the label ‘indie’, how many indie bands there are out there, or how many bands people call ‘emo’, there’s thousands of them, and each band sounds completely different. When people read or hear these labels it just doesn’t mean very much at all.”

“With regards to our band, a lot of the lyrics are really sarcastic, and when they were originally written they were written as if they were just going to be read off a page, and then we put them to music. Half of the album, or at least the last 5 songs, are completely fictional, so they sort of tell a story. I’d say we’re a rock band with very, I don’t know… theatrical influences? I don’t know, how would you describe it?”

This was a pressure situation that I’d never been in before, someone throwing my question back to me. Furthermore, it was a band I love asking me to tell them what they sound like. “I think theatrical is a really good word for it. It’s kind of reminiscent of an album like Sgt. Peppers by the Beatles because of the massive experimentation and conceptualisation. And the theatricality is sort of like a band like, um… Queen, when they were in their very orchestrated opera-rock days.”

“Well, wow, that’s actually one of our favourite bands, so that’s a huge compliment. Thank you very much.” Spencer appeared to be flattered, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis mercifully avoided.

It was not without trepidation that I approached this interview with one of my favourite new bands. “We’re just a wet dream for the webzine,” claim Panic! on their track London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines. “Just for the record, the weather today is slightly sarcastic with a good chance of a) indifference and b) disinterest in what the critics say…”

Obviously, I was a little worried that my favourite band would hate me, a lowly webzine contributor. So I came right out and admitted to Spencer that I knew I was the scum of the earth. But thankfully he was quick to put my mind at ease. “No! Not all webzines! Just some. I don’t hate you just because you write for a music site, we owe a lot to the people who have given us exposure on their websites.” Phew. But regardless, what kind of feedback is important to the kids in P!atD when it comes to their music?

“A good review doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just one person’s opinion, same with a bad review, and there’s no guarantee that people will listen to that anyway. People who leave a message on their myspace or something “I hate your band”, for all we know that kid’s sitting there in a Slipknot t-shirt, or listening to Disturbed, and then it’s pretty obvious that they won’t like our music. I don’t have a problem with someone saying to me “I hate your band”, as long as they can then sit there and have a conversation about what it is that they don’t like about our music or our band. If they just don’t like us because we’re popular or we’re doing well then that doesn’t really count.”

So you can ignore the critics, and ignore the hype if you are so inclined. Instead, I asked Spencer straight from the metaphorical horse’s mouth; if he could say just one thing to Australian music fans to try and convince them to give his band and their record a go, what would it be?

“Only one thing? Okay, well… at the heart of it, our goal when making the album was to have no song sound the same. We wanted the sound to be interesting, and diverse, we used so many different instruments and tried to incorporate different ideas. In that time, place, and in our minds, that was really what we were hoping to achieve. So, if that sounds like something you might be interested, then please go and pick up a copy of our record and give it a listen.”

I can only agree with Spencer’s recommendation. If you like your music a little difficult to define, with a few unexpected twists and turns and an unquenchable desire to hear it again straight away, then you may just have the fever.