Group sheds glam image, teen angst
Given the radical image changes Panic at the Disco has undergone in the past year, it's hard not to read the lyrics to the new album's opening song as a pre-emptive strike against critics.

"Oh, how it's been so long/we're so sorry we've been gone/we were busy writing songs/for you,'' bassist Jon Walker sings, by way of apology for the two-and-a-half-year lag between A Fever You Can't Sweat Out and the new Pretty. Odd.

Then he launches into lines meant to comfort fans who have, no doubt, noticed that their favourite band now looks less like Queen and more like The Kinks: "You don't have to worry 'cause we're still the same band.''

Lyricist/guitarist Ryan Ross describes the song as "a lighthearted way to make an important statement". But despite his insistence that things in Panic-land are business as usual, the fact is that many things have changed since the band burst on the scene in 2005, resplendent in make-up and surrounded by circus performers.

The band shed bassist Brent Wilson and replaced him with Walker. They traded their black suits for vests, cravats and floral patterns. And, perhaps most crucially, they toned down the bombastic, glammy sound of their first CD, replacing it with a stripped-down approach that, at times, recalls The Beatles.

But it was that bombastic, glammy sound that made them stars in the first place. And with Panic at the Disco's history being so tied to it, will it be easy to shed?

John Janick, president of the indepedent label Fueled by Ramen, was introduced to Panic by Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz. "(Wentz told) me I had to check out this new band that had contacted him online,'' Janick says. "I listened to some songs and signed them. At that point, they'd never even played a show and were still in high school. We waited until they graduated to make the record.''

Realising the band had almost no fan base, Janick sent it on the road with Fall Out Boy and co-ordinated an online campaign. Using MySpace and PureVolume, he built a grassroots effort, aligning the new band with the more established one. The strategy seemed to pay off - Panic's first record sold over 10 000 copies in the first week.

Rock stations began spinning the CD, though the label didn't actively promote the record to radio. "I did not want them to be thrown in everyone's faces,'' Jannick says. Instead, the band took its time and shot its first video, for I Write Sins Not Tragedies.

That clip premiered in January 2006 on MTV's TRL. The video was the first time many viewers saw Panic, and it was crucial in establishing the visuals that would be associated with the band. For the rest of year, the band embarked on a tour. The stage sets and visuals were splashy, intricate; shows featured ballerinas and acrobats, while Panic's members used so much make-up that MAC Cosmetics offered to supply them eyeliner in exchange for an endorsement .

They released a series of big-budget videos, culminating in MTV's Video of the Year award for Sins in 2006.

Panic retreated to a cabin in the woods in early 2007 to work on a follow-up. Ross describes the effort as "a short story set to music. I was mostly working on it by myself, and while the other guys liked it, it was not as good as I wanted it to be.''

The band soon decided it was time to change direction. Ross adopted The Beatles as his new role models for the next take on the second Panic album. "They weren't afraid to try things,'' he says.

"We wanted to grow, and we were really over the circus theme at that point,'' he continues. "We went out in the woods and got new clothes and grew beards. Jon and (frontman) Brendon (Urie) wrote songs, and it became more of a band effort and less about me.''

In the summer of 2007, Panic tried out new songs, performing them at festivals in Europe. For a band whose garish live show had been its staple, it also took a risk by performing, as Wentz puts it, "wearing flannel shirts and jeans. They looked like they were coming out to do covers of the band.''

Performing looking like Pearl Jam, circa 1993, was the band's first airing of its new self, and the next step it took was dramatic in its own way. After two years of being known as Panic! at the Disco, the band removed the exclamation mark from its name. "We ruined a lot of MySpace names with that move,'' Urie says sarcastically.

The fans who haunt the band's MySpace and Facebook pages noticed the change and took to the forums to engage in some grammatically incorrect debates, with an even split between those calling the band a sellout and those writing off the minor change as harmless.

For the band, at least, the decision was seeped in meaning. "Dropping the exclamation mark was our way of drawing a line in the sand,'' Ross says. "We have a new record and we feel like a new band.''

"This is going to be like when Kiss took off their make-up,'' Wentz says. "At the end of 2006, Panic had really just become too known for their look and the circus visual. As artists, they had to reinvent themselves,'' he continues.

"I've spent time thinking about how our fans will respond to this,'' Ross says. "But a lot of them are close to our age, and they have also changed. They will see that this is a natural evolution and not something calculated.''

Urie adds: "We were really young when we wrote the first record, and that teenage angst paid off well.

"But we're happy with the music and with the place we are in. In a weird way, this feels like another first record.'' - Sapa-AP