Murder On The Dance Floor: Panic! At The Disco

“We’re all looking forward to our day off in London. We’re going to have to try and fit an entire week’s worth of tourist stuff into one day” Scouring Panic! At The Disco’s ace website (seriously, stop reading and check it out in its minimalist, virtual-home glory now!) we realise, smiling wryly, that their hoped-for day off has been supplanted in favour of along promotional slog, of which our interview is just one little part. Because this is what it must be like being in Las Vegas’ new white-hot whip-smart disco punks.

“We haven’t been able to see much” concedes drummer Spencer Smith, wearing a purple velvet blazer. “My impression is only from the shows and stuff. The kids have been amazing, the response is awesome. It’s weird, the record not being out and stuff, and all the kids are singing along, they know all the words. It’s really unbelievable” It’s this U.K tour with Fueled By Ramen label-mates The Academy Is… that has seen Panic! At The Disco take their first steps outside America (where the debut album ‘A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out’, released here mid-February, has already sold 150,000 copies on mostly word-of-mouth). If the reaction from the backpack fraternity here is anything to go by, expect to see Panic! At The Disco labelled the “new My Chemical Romance” right about…now.

“Kind of a reverse influence, because all the bands there kind of sound the same. Death metal and hardcore, post-hardcore…so I guess in the other direction it kind of influenced us, because we didn’t want to sound like that” – Vocalist Brendon Urie on the influence of Las Vegas. A super-shiny collision of keyboards, piano, organs, brass and melodic punk, it’s Panic! At The Disco’s sound that has, deservedly, been gaining them attention, rather than their snappy dress sense or that they hail from the same city as some other band whose name fails us. Veering from hi-octane electro to the sort of choruses whose only point is to be sung back by a sea of sweaty kids, arms aloft, ‘A Fever…’ is that rare example of a potentially generic record that actually has the balls to try something different (unlike, say, The Academy Is… debut), to the extent that it’s a record of two halves: the first more electronic, the second more stately.

Urie, sporting a fringe most myspace kids would die for, agrees: “When we first started we were a fresh band, we didn’t even know what direction we wanted to go in, so that’s why it’s kind of like split up, first half and second half. The first half has some of the first songs we ever wrote; the second half was when we started to get an idea of where we actually wanted to go with this band and what kind of sound we wanted. Our second album’s going to be more like the second half” This divide even extends to the lyrics (Spencer: “On the second half they’re more fictional, a little more storytelling”). On the first tracks at least, Panic! A.T.D (their line-up completed by Ryan Ross, lyrics-writer and guitar, and Brent Wilson, bassist) lash out at the culture of celebrity and the industry itself (particularly on ‘London Beckoned Songs About…’, where they sing: "Well we’re just a wet dream for the webzines / Make us it make us hip make us scene").