Panic At The Disco - …Live in Chicago

(Muso's Guide, December 23, 2008)

Album Review

Grandiose, flamboyant, overblown ‐ all words which can be used to describe the band formerly known as Panic! At The Disco.

See, the Las Vegas natives rocketed into the emo-sphere in 2005 with A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and gave other, lesser emo acts a real run for their emo-money. Did you get that they were emo?

Pitched against such emo-also-rans as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, Panic! At The Disco were always that little bit smarter, sexier ‐ and, crucially, better.

The vocal histrionics of singer Brendon Urie made sure that the band stood apart from the rest, and with song titles like ‘The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage’ and ‘Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have With Her Clothes On’, they truly cemented their witty credentials.

Panic’s overtly camp dress and pantomime videos - see Urie’s scarlet ringmaster in the video for ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ - placed them firmly in the emo camp, although they railed against it and clung instead to dreams of being the new Radiohead.

All of this is pertinent because the Panic At The Disco (notice the discarded exclamation point = serious artistes) …Live in Chicago record is an astounding place of incongruity.

On the band’s second studio album, 2008’s Pretty. Odd., there was a pretty marked shift ‐ seismic, if you will ‐ in their music. Out are the needlessly verbose titular effects, in comes maturity and classic songcraft ‐ surprisingly more in the vein of the afore-mentioned Oxford dons.

…Live in Chicago
represents the fault line of Panic At The Disco’s career, in very real terms. For every rambunctious ‘There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered, Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought Of It Yet’ from A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out , there’s an outstanding beauty in tracks like ‘Behind The Sea’ and ‘That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)’ off Pretty. Odd.

In between the first and second record, the band have undergone a sea change, and it is a great thing to hear the two sides of Panic juxtaposed on this live album. Urie’s drama school antics have melted away to leave a band who know what to do with a tune, and it’s given them a confidence which puts the tracks off Pretty. Odd. head and shoulders above the rest on show here.

The emo screamo crowd can be heard chanting on a variety of the tracks, most notably ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’, and Urie is an accomplished leader on those, but it is terrific after all to hear that the band can move on to bigger and better sounds. Pretty. Great.