AP Magazine

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фак, текст еле прочитала хД
первая часть интересная. познавательная.

[swjuly]

я ещё не прочитала и блин, забыла запостить напечатаную версию статьи:

Even though they're only 23 years old, Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith have been surprising people most of their adult lives. When their band, Panic! at the Disco, emerged from the steamy Las Vegas deserts in 2005 with A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, few could have predicted their meteoric rise to emo's upper echelons. In less than two years, Panic! made the transition from message-board buzz band to full-blown arena headliner in spite of naysayers who pounced on everything from the group's penchant for steampunk style to their dabbling in '60s psychedelic pop and Fab Four idolatry on their criminally underappreciated sophomore release, 2008's Pretty.Odd. But while many of the hurdles Urie and Smith faced were based on other people's opinions of what they should sound like, the pair were met with a decidedly more difficult obstacle in 2009: losing half of their band.

In late 2008, Panic! were headlining a Rock Band-sponsored arena tour, flanked by Dashboard Confessional and Plain White T's. While all seemed right in their universe, beind the scenes, the quartet were squabbling about their musical future. Much of the attention centered on guitarist Ryan Ross-the band's primary songwriter-who, along with bassist Jon Walker, wanted to pull P!ATD further from their electro-emo beginnings and into a sea of stripped-down '60s garage rock.

"We realized we weren't on the same page musically," frontman Urie explains in the back of a towncar through the streets of Manhattan, as part of the promotional trail for the new album. "Spencer and I wanted to do one thing, and [Ross and Walker] had other ideas. We didn't really see eye to eye. Music is so personal to us that it started changing the way we teated each other while we would wrote. It wasn't helping anybody."

"They were wondering why we weren't excited about working on their new songs," Smith remembers. :brendon was also working on songs, but they never wanted to work on his stuff. Ryan and I had been best friends for 11 years, so it was really tough to have the stuff foing on affect the live show." As Panic's man lyricist since their formation, Ross had expressed his desire to handle more lead vocals in the future, and after the band wrapped the Rock Band Live Tour, they weighed their options. "We thought maybe [Ross] would go off and [record an album of] his songs and still do a new Panic! record," Smith says. "We were all apprehensive to start the next record because ew knew we'd have to go through [the fights] all over again. We weren't talking about music or much at all; that shifted into 'Maybe you should just leave.'"

"Ryan Ross is a tremendous artist but a very restless soul," offers Pretty.Odd. producer Rob Mathes. "He wants to contunually push himself. It's very [John] Lennon-esque-burn the house you just lived in only to build a new one and then burn that one. Certain artists are that say: They want to set up shop and leave town. I think [Urie and Smith] missed what they had. Not that they wanted to go back to the emo universe-they realized that had gone by the wayside-but they wanted to follow their own thing."

Ross and Walker eventually left the band in the summer of 2009-shortly before Panic! were set to open Blink-182's reuniion tour-and the news predictably sent shockwaves through the scene. The carefully parsed PR statements released by each camp after the split sought to quell rumors that the divorce was anything less than amicable, but Urie and Smith admit the break resulted in some raw feelings at first. Ross and Walker fired the first shots last summer in AP 265's feature on their new group the Young Veins. While Ross said he was "shocked" Urie and Smith decided to keep the Panic! name alive, Walker was more outspoken: "Their decision to carry on as Panic! goes hand-in-hand with their mentality and work ethic and idea of actually being in a band... They'd rather play someone else's songs than write their own."

"It was a shock to read that," admits Urie, who stresses both camps are friendly again. "But I didn't take it personally. We never do, because things have a tendency to become misconstrued. We were still on talking terms, so it was never a big deal to us. We;ve always been fans of their talents, and we'll support them forever."


If there were concerns about Panic's viability in a Ryan Ross-less world, the band's new album, Vices & Virtues. should erase all doubts. Produced by Butch Walker (Weezer, Never Shout Never) and John Feldmann (the Used, Good Charlotte) in separate sessions, Vices takes the best moments of the band's first two albums and swirls them together with a giant dollop of extravagance. The dance track 'Hurricane" and "ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind)" recall the bouyant energy of Fever, "The Calendar" (a commentary on Ross and Walker's departure) and "Always" are awash in the sun-soaked poise and maturity of Pretty. And the pair dress up "Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met...)" and first single "The Ballad of Mona Lisa" with ragtime piano, bursting horns and schizophrenic string arrangements. "This band was built for excess and the cinematic," enthuses Butch Walker. "I love bands that aren't afraid to put a bunch of instrumentation into a song. It was nice to have free-flowing creativity with no limits. Panic are never going to be a stripped down garage-rock band, so throwing that out the window from the start makes it that much more fun."

The re-inclusion of Fever's electronic elements will surely leave Pretty.Odd. tagged as "that Ryan Ross record" in the eyes of many. But Smith says that's not the case. "We're all really proud of that record," he stresses. "There was no one dictating anything. We just wanted to figure out a way to make [Vices] a mix between the first two albums, but I don't think the songs fit on either record. It really feels like a progression."

Carrying on as a duo (ex-Cab guitarist Ian Crawford and the Brobeck's Dallon Weekes round out the live band, but Smith and Urie say they haven't considered expanding the permanent lineup), both musicians admit finding their sea legs for album No. 3 took time, though they had extra incentive: "There would be interviews where people would say, 'Well Ryan, you wrote everything,' and that totally wasn't true," says Smith sharply. "It was so hard to ehar that, and we really wanted to show that he wasn't the band and we weren't just being told what to play."

"It was a little tougher because with fewer ideas, everyone has to work that much harder," Urie says. "Especially lyrically. I never considered myself great at explaining myself, so it was a learning process. I had some songs on Pretty.Odd, but they were very lighthearted. I've always thought Ryan was a great lyricist, but in the back of my head I was thinking, 'How am I going to pull this off?'?

Urie sough out Mathes, who encouraged the singer to write every day, no matter how good he thought his words were. "Ryan Ross wakes up in the morning with a journal by his bed; he came out of the womb a lyricist," Mathes explains. "Brendon had to work at it a little more. I told him, 'The world is yours! Go grab the fucker. Find out who you are and don't write for anybody else. Don't try to be Ryan. You've got what everybody wants. When you open your mouth, everybody knows you're Brendon Urie from Panic! at the Disco.'"

"I think there was a creative weight that was lifted (when Ross left)," adds Walker. "Brendon might have had that caged-rat effect when they went in to make this record. He didn't have to answer to anybody and just let loose. It felt good to see him be liberated, and by the end of it, it was unbelieveable. Just wind him up and watch him go."

If Urie unearthed a newfound confidence and swagger during the making of Vices, it couldn't have come at a better time. The band have a full-fledged U.K. tour on the books for this spring, and they're currently ironing out details for a U.S. trek that will cover most of the country. Both Urie and Smith are salivating at the chance to play new songs live ("It's been a long time coming," the singer remarks) but admit the past two years have been draining. "I didn't want to split up the band," Smith confesses. "I wish everyone had been happy."

"If you gave him truth serum, I think [Ross] would say it makes him sad that this thing he created is still thriving without him," Mathes says. "But I don't think it's who he is now."

That comment raises an entirely new question: Who are Panic! at the Disco these days? On Pretty.Odd.'s opening track, "We're So Straving," the band attempted to assuage fans jarred by their style shift, singing, "You don't have to worry 'cause we're still the same band." Given everything that's happened to Urie and Smith over the past two years, are they still the same band?

"That's a good question," says Urie, breaking a lengthy pause with a laugh. "It's definitely a new Panic!. We're a new band, and it's a fresh, new start. We had a lot of options, but it took us a while to figure out where we could go."

Smith agrees: "I don't think we're still the same band. I think that even though the goals and aspirations and ultimate dreams of this band are the same, we're as excited as when we were recording the first album. To have that excitement back feels great."

Zooey.
ай факинг лав ю.

"Ryan Ross wakes up in the morning with a journal by his bed; he came out of the womb a lyricist,"

[swjuly]

Джемери
да меня-то не за что - это я с жж скопипастила