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Panic at the Disco shows influence of Beach Boys, Beatles in 'Pretty. Odd'
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal
Published on Thursday, May 15, 2008
Musical genres, like music artists, spring up seemingly out of nowhere. A few bands/fans discover they have a similar sound, and suddenly there is a community.
In the old days (that would be pre-Internet), these ''underground'' genres, such as punk, would proliferate through old-fashioned fan zines, but now it's blog spots.
Online, genres often burn bright hot below the mainstream-pop radar screen, proliferating on indie record labels.
If said genre lasts long enough, eventually one of the majors will smell money, sign one or more of the growing genre's leaders (i.e., whichever bands are the most popular and most likely to sell) and introduce the ''new music genre'' to the general public.
This process has happened with punk (though it took 20 years), hip-hop, (hair) metal and others. More recently, an underground genre that made the jump to the mainstream is ''emo.''
Emo has musical roots in '80s hardcore punk and indie rock bands, such as Fugazi, Sunday Day Real Estate and At-the Drive In.
Lyrics tend to be highly personal and confessional. Song titles are lengthy, ironic and/or humorous. And it has a young and insular audience, with plenty of Mommy and Daddy's discretionary income to spend and a desire to sing along with their heroes at the top of their lungs.
Bands such as Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Plain White Ts have clawed their way up the underground emo ladder into the harsh and potentially profitable light of the mainstream.
Las Vegas-based emo band Panic at the Disco (formerly Panic! At The Disco) is headlining the latest iteration of the Honda Civic Tour, also featuring Motion City Soundtrack, the Hush Sound and Phantom Planet, which stops at Time Warner Cable Amphitheater at Tower City in Cleveland on Friday.
The band is named for a line in a song by defunct emo rockers Name Taken and has inadvertently climbed its way out of the insular emo ghetto. And just as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance expanded their sounds and shunned the ''emo'' tag after hitting the big time, PATD's latest album, Pretty. Odd, turns the standard emo sound found in its debut A Fever You Can't Sweat Out inside out.
That album contained the hit I Write Sins Not Tragedies and sold more than 2 million records. But when it came time to write PATD's sophomore effort, the band found itself spinning its creative wheels and junked nearly an album's worth of material and started from scratch. Rather than more of the same churning guitars and soaring hook-laden melodies that have codified the emo sound, the band delved into the collections of their elders, borrowing the musical ambition of '60s and '70s classic rock and pop bands. The most referenced touchstones are the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The band also incorporated elaborate arrangements that include orchestras and horns to its songs.
''We love both those bands and I've been listening to the Beatles since I was listening to music, and some of the other guys are just starting to recently get into it [Beatles and classic rock] a little bit more,'' Jon Walker, the band's bassist and newest member, said from an early tour stop in Miami while nursing both a cold and a sunburn. The band is rounded out by singer/guitarist Brendon Urie, guitarist Ryan Ross and drummer Spencer Smith.
''There's a reason that [the Beatles] are considered one of the best bands in the world,'' Walker said. ''We definitely weren't trying to rip off anybody. We just like the way that stuff sounded and it had a lot more character and they had a lot more to say and they knew not to take themselves so seriously all the time.
''Definitely a good band to take inspiration from.''
Beyond the music, Walker (the band elder at the ripe old age of 22; the other members are all 21) added that the level of musicianship that was necessary to make records before the age of Pro-Tools and sampling was also inspiring.
Musically, Pretty. Odd is a pretty brave move for a band whose fan base is mostly young and fickle and not always interested in hearing their crush bands grow musically. But Walker said the change in direction was necessary for the health of the band.
''We always had the intent of trying to just completely do something original, and basically we wanted to do something that we felt natural doing, whether that was sounding like the last CD or not,'' he said. ''We just didn't want to make a CD that sounded like the last CD because we thought that was what we had to do.
''And I think after we wrote the first couple songs . . . we just started realizing that it was a little bit different and it definitely crossed our minds at the time, but after playing them over and over, we knew we were having fun playing them and felt like the right move either way.''
Despite their confidence in their new direction, the album opens with the 81-second We're So Starved, which sounds almost like an apology:
''Oh, how it's been so long, We're so sorry we've been gone, We were busy writing songs for . . . You don't have to worry 'cause we're still the same band,'' Urie sings.
The short song also contains the first appearance of the orchestra recorded at the famed Abbey Road Studios and the band's new four- and five-part Beatles/Brian Wilson-inspired harmony vocals. Guitarist Ryan Ross also takes a few lead vocals, and Walker says all band members now sing on stage.
The only palpable concession to emo conventions in the album's first single, the jaunty Nine in the Afternoon, comes in singer/guitarist Urie's big hooky chorus melodies, which still soar above the music bed, even when that bed now includes a full brass and string section.
The elaborate production continues on the ballad She Had the World, to the chugging horns and tinkling saloon piano of From a Mountain in the Middle of the Cabins and to the jaunty quarter-note piano stabs and sawing strings of the '60s-ish When the Day Met the Night.
Other songs, such as She's a Handsome Woman, the relatively straight-forward slice of back-porch country music Folkin' Around and the gently swaying groove of Northern Downpour, don't pile on as many accoutrements, but add plenty of variety.
Walker said writing, rehearsing and recording the new songs made the band tighter as a unit. Any fears or trepidation they felt about audience reaction to the new material has been assuaged.
''It feels really great to play our new songs, especially because a lot of people know the words. We were kind of nervous. A lot of our fans love singing our songs and we've been playing the first CD for two-and-a-half-three years and we were kind of nervous going into it, not knowing what it would be like. But it seems like people almost know them [the new songs] better.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Musical genres, like music artists, spring up seemingly out of nowhere. A few bands/fans discover they have a similar sound, and suddenly there is a community.
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