MARCH/APRIL 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM Panic! At the Disco released the long- awaited Vices & Virtues, the band’s third album and its fi rst written entirely by Urie and Smith. “It defi nitely took some time to fi gure out exactly what we wanted to do,” Smith acknowledges. “Even though it was still Panic, it felt like a new band.” Working with producers John Feldmann and Butch Walker, Urie and Smith struggled to fi nd their sound—but they did know they wanted to recapture the spirit of their debut, 2005’s multiplatinum A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Smith recalls that in the group’s early days, the members felt a sense of musical freedom. They paired punk guitars and pop melodies with synthesizer licks and dance beats, never thinking their hyperactive, hyper-emotional sound would help defi ne alternative rock for the MySpace era. “On our fi rst record, that was the mentality: Anything was allowed,” Smith says. “There was no pressure. Any musical style was possible.” On its follow-up, the band opted for what Smith calls a more “confi ned” Brendon Urie, Spencer Smith Jennifer Tzar approach, allowing their budding enthusiasm for ’60s psychedelic rock to lead them down the rabbit hole of Pretty. OOdddd., a Sgt. Pepper-style concept record. PANIC!PANIC! ATAT THE DISCODISCO VicesVices & VirtuesVirtues retains some of those No need for alarm—the synth-popsters have retro elements, but Urie and Smith mostly dust off the synths and deliver gigantic returned to the dance fl oor arena-emo choruses like the one heard on the lead single “The Ballad of Mona Lisa.” WHEN PANIC! AT THE DISCO Ross had just quit, leaving singer-guitarist “One album got it out of our system,” Smith announced in July 2009 that it was reinserting Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith says. “We were still 20-somethings, and we the exclamation point it had dropped from to carry on as a duo. Fortunately, the other, were naturally going through the changes its name the previous year, there were two more optimistic interpretation—that Urie that you go through, fi nding new bands and ways to read the news. One: The Las Vegas and Smith were starting fresh and affi rming new music you get really excited about. It’s band really was panicking. This would have that one of the decade’s most successful gotten to a point where we’re not changing been understandable, given that bassist Jon rock groups wasn’t fi nished—turned out to as drastically or as quickly.” Walker and guitarist and primary lyricist Ryan be correct. The proof came in March, when –Kenneth Partridge Oates recorded the album just a half-blockhalf-bloc away, at a small John Hurt, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and others—all in drastically publishing-house studio. He and producer Mike Henderson worked different arrangements from the original recordings. “I like to get quickly, recording for only four days with a pickup band of local back to where the song was even before it became a record, session pros like Dobro master Jerry Douglas and mandolin giant before the producers got involved,” he says. “I go by feel—if it Sam Bush. “This album is about as close to a live album as you can feels right, it is right, as long as the songwriters aren’t going to be have,” Oates says. “There are hardly any overdubs. What you hear is insulted or freaked out. I don’t think we messed with the songs, what we played that day, and I sang 80 percent of the vocals while we just reimagined them.” we were cutting the track. I had never done that before.” Oates used As for Hall and Oates, while the duo continues to tour together a Guild GAD-F20 acoustic outfi tted with a Fishman pickup for all there are no plans for a new album anytime soon. “Darryl and I are his guitar parts. “The funny thing is that all my vocals came through more interested in what we’re doing individually,” says Oates, who MARCH/APRILthe pickup, so I 2011was stuck,” M he MUSICsays with a &chuckle. MUSICIANS “Had I not been MAGAZINE now divides his time between Colorado and Nashville. “We do about singing OK, it would have been a big problem—I would have had to 30 to 35 dates a year. It’s fun, we have a great band and people overdub all my guitar parts.” love it. But it’s like visiting a great museum—it’s fantastic when you’re The songs he selected form what Oates calls “a musical spending time there, but you don’t want to live there.” autobiography” covering his early infl uences, heroes like Mississippi –Chris Neal 17 MARCH/APRIL 2011 M MUSIC & MUSICIANS MAGAZINE M mag 10.indd 17 4/17/11 7:39:17 PM.