Panic! At The Disco releases its new album and repackages a new look featuring lead singer Brendon Urie.
Perhaps it’s a victory that the name Panic! At The Disco even gets brought up in 2016.
After all, the same can’t be said for most other bands who broke out around the same time. My Chemical Romance is a group we talk about in the past tense. Good Charlotte’s frontmen started making folk music. And Simple Plan is … well, Simple Plan is trying, gosh darn it.
Still, the Panic! At The Disco that exists in 2016 is much different than the Panic! at the Disco whose debut exploded in 2005, both organizationally and musically. Of the four original members — childhood friends who wrote and recorded the massively successful “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” before even graduating high school — just one remains: the band’s frontman and chief songwriter, Brendon Urie.
Most bands endure lineup change in a similar fashion. A member and the band announce the two have parted ways, rumors swirl and a new member is announced a few weeks or months later. Panic! At The Disco, however, has gone with a different approach: no permanent replacements are announced, ever.
And that’s how the “group” has gotten to 2016. What was once a foursome has become just Urie, touring with guests and retaining the name of the group for himself. In a recent Reddit AMA, Urie responded to the question of reuniting the original group with a simple “nah,” and the booklet inside the new record flatly states, “Panic! At The Disco is: Brendon Urie.”
That new record is called Death of a Bachelor and now sits No. 1 at the Billboard 200. It also proves Urie probably deserved the solo gig all along.
Urie can do it all in the studio from guitar to piano to drums, while also packing maybe the best voice in his genre. That genre seems to change along with the lineup on the new album and even seems to change from song to song.
In comparison to what the album has to offer as a whole, the first two songs are a bit of a disappointment. “Victorious,” which the Marching 110 covered during a halftime show in October and received praise from Urie, never quite achieves what it sets out to do. The track pales greatly in comparison to “This Is Gospel,” the lead from Panic!’s last album. “Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time” follows and is more disorganized chaos than anything else.
The album finally hits its stride with the third track, “Hallelujah,” a single the band released back in April. The song may be the most infectious track the band has ever released and one that really deserved to lead off the record.
When heard, “Hallelujah” is just a matter of waiting for the rest of the record to live up to that level of energy. “LA Devotee” and “Golden Days” are two songs that represent what Urie is capable of when he’s at his best. They lead with a fast-paced verse that sucks you in and then a big chorus that blows you back in your seat. For that reason, they’d function well on any record in the band’s catalogue.
Two of the album’s stronger showings happen to be songs in which Urie finally explores the influence of his idol, Frank Sinatra. It’s clear that Urie wants to bring both the subtlety and the power of the icon into the modern landscape, and while you could debate whether he has the vocal capability to fully do so, it sure is a damn good effort.
“Death of a Bachelor” effortlessly blends pop and big-band together, while the album-closing “Impossible Year” is a melancholy reflection of Urie’s recent endeavor into married life.
The identity of a whole band centered around one person isn’t exactly something new, but the group carrying the identity as one person is something different. With Death of a Bachelor, however, Urie has proved he can pull it off. The record isn’t without its faults, especially at the beginning, but when you land on a hit, it sticks with you for a long time.
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Whether it’s the band’s emo-inspired debut, its Beatles-inspired follow up, the two subsequent pop releases or the newest effort, Urie has shown an affinity for building an album that is hardly rivaled in his genre. To be fair, it’s a genre Urie practically exists in by himself, just like his band.
Rating:
4/5
@_TonyWolfe_
