It’s hard to blame the haters for not being sold on Vices & Virtues, the third studio album by Panic! At The Disco. With half the band departing to form The Young Veins (including primary lyricist Ryan Ross), alongside the questionable decision to continue on as a duo instead of replacing the wayward members, there were more than enough reasons to doubt Panic!’s ability to put out a quality album. That said, while Vices & Virtues isn’t nearly as disastrous as some might have anticipated, too often it feels like the band are trying to recapture past glory.
Let’s get this out of the way now; if you’re hoping for anything remotely close to 2007′s tremendously under-appreciated Pretty, Odd., don’t waste your time. Whatever creative input Ross and Jon Walker (Panic!’s former bassist) has that led to that album has effectively been retconned out of this album, right down to replacing the exclamation point in the band’s name. As first single “The Ballad of Mona Lisa” would suggest, Vices & Virtues picks up right where the band’s debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out left off. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that that album came out six years ago, and Panic!’s brand of cabaret-flavored dance punk sounds dated now. Still, “Mona Lisa” is a solid introduction, and to lead singer Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith’s credit, you wouldn’t think the band has missed a beat.
But from there the album suffers from Urie’s attempts to recreate what made Fever so good. “Hurricane” and “Let’s Kill Tonight” sound like they could have been B-sides from the debut album, left off only because they lack a great lyric or two to tie the whole thing together. Musically Vices & Virtues holds up serviceably well, but the absence of Ross’s wit is felt too strongly. No lyric on this album holds a candle to the gems scattered throughout A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. “Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind)” has more than enough beat and a big enough chorus, but again, lacks that last missing piece that superglues the song to the memory.
The two moments that shine the brightest on what is an unfortunately dim record show that, if nothing else, there’s somewhere for Panic! to go creatively when and if they’ve decided to stop remembering how awesome 2005 was. With a bit of polish, “Memories” could be this generation’s answer to “Livin’ On A Prayer”, a tale of eloping lovers who find that surviving just on love is harder than they thought. The melody is one of the strongest on the record, and what songwriting talents Urie possesses are at their peak here. Meanwhile “The Calendar” is the height of Vices & Virtues melodic pop-punk. It isn’t as big as other tracks on this album, but it’s the most balanced. If Panic! make it to album number four, these tracks would be a great place to start mining for ideas.
In short, Vices & Virtues is to Panic! At The Disco (and their debut album) as the prequels are to Star Wars. It walks like its predecessor, it sounds like its predecessor, and there will be a group of devoted fans who hold it up as being just as good, but there’s something, a spark of genius, missing from it, and that absence keeps it from being great. It might be unfair to compare this record to earlier works so much, but with Urie and Smith practically begging listeners to do it at every turn, it’s nearly impossible not to.
Panic! At The Disco – Memories [iTunes]
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