Panic! Are Back!

I know I'm kind of late to the party here, but when my main source of internet is my phone, I tend to be very unwilling to click on links, so there's actually a couple of new songs by various artists that I need to listen to.
I am quite excited about Panic! At The Disco. Back when I first started getting into alternative music (emo, if that's how you insist on seeing it. I won't deny I have my leanings to the dark and angsty), I was drawn to them through the now-infamous I Write Sins Not Tragedies, which led me to getting A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (it's a weird album, but honestly absolutely brilliant as far as I'm concerned). Pretty Odd didn't quite get the same reception as its predecessor, and so it kind of passed me by - I still haven't sat down and listened to it properly as yet, but it sounds completely different to Fever... - but I was all over Vices And Virtues.
Then they went quiet, and they kind of drifted to the back of my mind. Brendon was still vaguely present in my mind through his tweets, but I had a lot of other bands to listen to.
Now, however, they're back. They've got two new songs; Miss Jackson, and This Is Gospel, off their upcoming album Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! (I was quite excited when I realised that's out of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas). So far, I haven't managed to actually listen to them, but from what I've heard from other fans they're following Panic!'s theme of reinventing their musical style with each album, and tagging onto the new deviation of pop punk that their big brother Fall Out Boy created earlier this year with Save Rock And Roll.

The fans were definitely right. It's definitely Panic!, but the slightly dirty but poppy feel to the music is quite Save Rock And Roll-y. I think that's a good thing, because when that album first came out I was kind of mixed about it, but now I and a lot of other fans have adjusted to the new style, it's a perfect time for Panic! At The Disco to start doing this. It's not eyeliner, angst and weird Victorian pantomime type music, like their older stuff. It's a lot more big beats and choruses full of backing singers doing slightly eerie shouting. It's a lot less focused on having complicated lyrics, but there is still a darkness in there that works well against what does sound more pure pop than pop punk or alternative.

I was apprehensive that they wouldn't be able to get me with both songs. Panic! has this way of making each song they do unique in a way that it can be quite difficult to guarantee that you're going to like a whole album based off one or two songs. However, I was proven wrong with this. A bit more upbeat than Miss Jackson, but still with that same kind of defiant feel, this has made me very excited about their new album.

Forgive me for bringing My Chem into this, but I'm seeing a slightly Danger Days-esque trend with my favourite bands these days. What I mean by that is that in the older music of some of these bands, it's just as good but there's a lot more darkness and complicated feelings. Then there comes a point where, in their real lives they battle whatever demons fuelled the previous stuff, and the music they make when they've overcome that tends to be a lot more cheerful, a lot more hopeful. MCR did it with Danger Days after the stress that had been building up throughout the Black Parade era, after getting their personal lives sorted and maturing. Fall Out Boy did it after dealing with their various issues - Patrick has admitted to being quite controlling over how the music was being made to the point of shutting out Andy and Joe, and Pete needed to deal with his excessive fame - and came back to us with Save Rock And Roll. Now, Panic! At The Disco, if the rest of their music follows this trend, are giving us Too Weird To Live . . . as their 'we've grown up' album. They've had a lot of issues with changing band members, and, as P!ATD fans will know, Spencer (drums) has backed out of their current tour to continue recovering from his addictions (well done, seriously Spencer).
Some people might not like that. There are some people out there who feel that artists make their best music while their lives are fucked up, and I will admit that I do really love a lot of the music I've heard that was created during bouts of extreme depression and drug use. But the thing is that we need happy music. We need happy, powerful music that follows on from the message of the previous music, that there are other people out there who suffer, and we need the music that says 'well yeah it's been bad, but we're here now and we've gotten past our problems and we're calm and happy and stable and we're going to make music to show that'.