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Review: Panic at the Disco
“The last time I was here, I couldn’t legally drink,” Panic at the Disco singer Brendon Urie said Saturday night to a sold-out crowd at Stubb’s.
His audience knows what he’s talking about — the average age seemed to range from just-out-of-college at one end and here-with-mom-or-dad at the other. At 33, I’m pretty sure I was the oldest person there who was not accompanying a minor.
This is what happens when a band of pop rockers breaks through to MTV. In four short years, Panic at the Disco has moved from being another garage band in the Nevada suburbs to a outta-nowhere Video of the Year winner at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards to headlining the annual Honda Civic tour. Previous headliners have included such 21st century rock staples as Blink-182, Incubus, Maroon 5 and Fall Out Boy.
The openers were similarly on point. Phantom Planet, the Hush Sound and Motion City Soundtrack all delivered solid, somewhat forgettable high-octane guitar rock. But never let it be said that fan service wasn’t first in their minds. The openers set themselves up at tables near the merch booth, where they signed autographs and posed for pictures with dozens of (mostly) teenage girls. They all seemed like exceptionally nice boys.
Panic was greeted with the loudest screams and delivered something even the parents wouldn’t find objectionable. With Urie’s cleanly strummed Telecaster sitting on top of the mix, Panic’s music seems to have less to do with modernist pop-punk songcraft as tightly constructed songs and more to do with classic rock such as Fall Out Boy. A little slower and stiffer and songs such as “We’re So Starving” and “Nine in the Afternoon” could have been from a ‘60s rock album, a ‘70s power pop album, an ‘80s corporate rock record or a ‘90s bubble-grunge act.
No wonder MTV loves them.
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