Review Summary: Cynicism has never looked so fancy.
Panic! at the Disco is a band that has been misunderstood every time they are discussed; their debut album more so than anything else they've done as a band. To be fair, however, it's surprising the band is so popular. This is a band that has made a living writing lyrics about the multitude of reasons why the entire human race is generally shit, yet the lyrics are done in such a catchy way that the audience can't help but sing along in what is a fabulous example of irony.
Panic's cynical lyricism combined with an upbeat, gothic orchestral composition, propel the band far above many Pop Rock contemporaries at the time. No finer example can be mentioned from this debut album than their iconic single
I Write Sins Not Tragedies; a tune which combines electric guitars, string instruments, and harmonic vocals from Brendan Urie to create a damning portrait of the modern Christian family. In the song, they take aim at the backstabbing personalities of the modern Christian family, so fake to others while wishing Hell to all those they call friends. Being from a heavily Catholic childhood this hit home like no other tune.
No matter the content of their lyrics, the true hero here is in their instrumentation.
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage with multiple different guitars, pounding percussion, and so many other instruments that the entire song begins to just fuse together in one giant sound that pounds at the listener, unwilling to be silenced by volume control. In terms of percussion, one has to give praise to Spencer Smith, who follows the overall rhythm to a tee while leaving room to just hammer on the drums as if he's pretending it's his worst enemy. This can be made more obvious in songs like
London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines, where Spencer's drumming is given center stage.
As if it wasn't obvious by their title choices for their tunes, Panic! at the Disco has no problem spelling out to you their peeves. In this entire album they deal with suicide, marriage, mental health, alcoholism, the media, and women; all with a hefty dose of attitude and passive aggression. Most critics at the time, and today, have criticized the band for being pretentious and "whiny". They took aim at the bands cynical and overlong song titles, they attacked the bands lyrics for simply using these subjects as window dressing and not giving them the care they deserved.
Except that was the point.
The subjects were designed in this album to be exploitative. There was zero care taken in trying to explore these problems with nuance. These issues like suicide, mental health, alcoholism, were all songs taken from a checklist of "List of shit affecting the human race today." These problems were treated as nothing but an aesthetic to give their songs some shallow theme that mattered very little to any of the people listening, and it was genius.
Here's an unfortunate truth; no matter how much we humans pretend we take these types of issues seriously to make us feel good about ourselves, we don't care. Suicide makes the news, we all talk about how sad we are, then we go back to bullying the fat kid in school until the cycle hits the beginning. Alcoholism rises among the youth, we all claim how responsible we are, then we go back to getting black out drunk because "YOLO". Some dude starts some twitter or facebook drama, we all say how much we're above that noise, and then we go back to telling our girlfriends how much of a whore Sally in 3rd period is and how she should be locked in a nunnery like the skank she is.
We're a fucking sick species and Panic! knows that. This album isn't about trying to "make a statement", this is a band laying a bunch of depressing crap in front of you because that's how we treat these subjects when nobody is looking. We just switch channels for the next tragedy we can express sympathy for so we can pat ourselves on the back and remind ourselves how "good" we are. That's why this album pisses so many critics off; because this album doesn't treat it's listeners like intelligent people who want albums with "meaning", it treats them like a bunch of egotistical hypocrites who only use tragedy as a tool to enforce their misguided cockiness in themselves. This isn't some sob story you can cry over for an hour and then move on with your day. This isn't some issue you can eliminate with a magical cure. This is a reality you can't ignore...
NO
This is
A Fever You Can't Sweat Out.
