Penthouse
DISCO INFERNO
Pop-punk hit machines Panic At The Disco channel their inner Sgt. Pepper
With their 2006 debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, these four Sin City emo-ists seduced the world catchy cabaret-dipped singles and outrageous videos. The record went platinum and they were duly crowned undisputed indie-rock champs. For their follow-up, the orchestrally enhanced Pretty. Odd., they holed up at the famed Abbey Road studio in London and put Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival and, of course, the Beatles on heavy rotation. Penthouse rang lead singer Brendon Urie to inquire about everything from punctuation to pornomines.
Pretty. Odd. sounds extremely different from your debut. What do you attribute that to?
We were seventeen years old when we did that first record. We were poor and angry at the world that we had to work crappy jobs, so that’s the record which resulted from it. I guess this one was more informed by what we’ve learned over the past three years—which isn’t much. It’s just the next organic step that we’ve decided to take with the band.
Obviously there’s a lot of Beatles and Beach Boys-esque orchestration on this one. How do you feel about those types of comparisons?
If people take away from it that it’s Beatles-esque then I think of that as a compliment and I think it’s very flattering. on the first record we were compared with Fall Out Boy, so I guess the Beatles is a big step up from that. [Laughs.]
Since this is PENTHOUSE, we have to talk about the video for “Build God, Then We’ll Talk.”
[Laughs.] Oh, perfect.
Who actually came up with the term “pornomime” and whose idea was it to have a mime performing sex acts to the soundtrack of your song?
I don’t remember who came up with the term, but the concept had been lying around for a while. It was kind of a weird idea, but it just seemed like it fit the song and what we wanted it to look like. The song’s so crazy and the video is even crazier!
The other thing that keeps coming up in your press clips is the fact that a lot of people apparently think all four of you are gay.
Right. [Laughs.] Which isn’t a totally off suggestion or anything of that stuff, because the stuff we put out is pretty flamboyant.
Why do you think people seem to be so obsessed with your sexual orientation?
I don’t know, I think people want us to be gay, that’s why they keep suggesting that we are gay. You create your own experience, but regardless of what you believe, it’s not going to happen.
Speaking of controversial issues, I have to ask why you guys dropped the exclamation point from your name. Do you foresee being sick of answering this question for the next five years?
No, it’s funny. I think it’s awesome how much hype is going around about the exclamation point. Honestly, we had never really given much thought about it. I think we just put it in there one time when we wrote it once on the Internet and people just started writing it like that.
Pete Wentz signed you and your first record sounded a lot like Fall Out Boy. Do you feel you’d like to transcend that at this point?
Transcend Pete Wentz? [Laughs.] I mean I guess if it’s really that big of a deal. No, I mean, we definitely owe Pete for checking out our band and I think we’d rather have our music stand up for itself instead of just because of those associations.
Do you think a lot of people are going to be surprised by this record?
Yeah, so far people seem to be surprised. We’ve actually played a few songs live at festivals and acoustically recently and people seem to be really surprised both negatively and positive, which is great. We’re actually getting a reaction, which is all we can ask for.
There’s a lot of sexual imagery in your music and videos. Are you ever concerned about the younger fans or what parents will think?
You can’t ever really control what people will think of your music if, so if parents choose to get mad at any of our lyrics or any of our sexual imagery then I guess that it can’t really be helped—but it can be encouraged, right?
That said, what’s your stance on signing girls’ boobs?
I mean I will sign anything that is put in front of me. That’s as much as I can say about that subject.