Panic at the Disco: Lacking in Punctuation?

Last night Panic at the Disco returned to the district in its third week of the US tour promoting the new album, "Pretty. Odd." Fans were left satisfied, but also, confused. Where were the cages? And the whips, and burlesque dancers? This is not the Panic! At the Disco of yesterday. Having dropped the exclamation point, and seemingly all the opulence that went with it, today's Panic has exchanged its lyrical and visual verbosity for something much more simple, at times even dangerously straddling the line between rock and folk-rock. Tambourines? Flower-covered microphones? What happened?



In some interviews, the band claims to have simply "grown up" since the release of its first album, but could the fact that all of them –excluding frontman Brendan Urie—acquired girlfriends since "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" account for the lack of that certain sense of sexual frustration so predominant on the first disc? Maybe.



While the jeans are still tight, coattails and eyeliner have been replaced with hippie vests and paisley; lyrics juxtaposing lingerie and rosary beads ousted by talk of birds, the moon, and the sky. And oh yeah, acoustic guitar. It's almost as if the opulence of their last tour reached such great heights that there was nowhere left to go but down; the sheer insanity of it imploded and was reborn in the most transcendentalist way.



It was interesting to see how the band's formerly trademark lyrical clutter translated to their new stripped-down style. Hearing tunes off the old album sounded so different that at times it was like listening to cover songs; less-emo, less riff-laden, less desperate (but in that good way) than the originals.



Today, they excel in multiple-part harmonies, rhythm uninhibited by tongue-tied text, and Urie even dabbles in some surprisingly excellent falsetto. The performance was good –full of energy and crowd-pleasing tunes – but it did leave something to be desired for fans of the original, angst-ridden group. Secure with their lady friends and mega corporate sponsorship (it was the Honda Civic tour, after all), maybe Panic doesn't have anything left to panic about.