HOW DID WE GET HERE is a column where UNLACED’s least musical Matt Gawronski reviews an album and tries to figure out how the artistic milieu got so far away from him, so fast. Maybe it lets him work out some unresolved feelings about his long-gone boyhood, or, come to grips with the rapidly swinging pendulum that is his cultural irrelevancy, or, maybe he’s just a sadist. In this episode he reviews Panic! At The Disco’s final album - VIVA LAS VENGEANCE.

I’ve recently discovered that I find little difficulty in motivating myself to do things that will actively hurt me. Standing on a windy hillside in the Great British Peaks, my hand hovering over the steel wire of an allegedly electrified fence, my brain becomes galactic. I know that the fence is electric, because it says so on the sign. I know that the fence will hurt me when I touch it, because I more or less understand how electricity works. And I know that I really don’t have to touch the fence at all, because there’s no reward waiting for me beyond the pain. And yet.

On a completely unrelated note, tonight I decided to listen to the latest and seemingly final album of one of the least influential bands of all time: Panic! at the Disco

I should probably admit at this point that I have seen Panic! at the Disco live three times and that I was really big fan throughout my teens and up to my very early not-teens. To this day I unfortunately stand by A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out as a solid weird emo-pop album, and I will even go so far as to say that Pretty. Odd isn’t the worst Beatles mimicry I’ve ever heard. That being said, I haven’t really listened to the past couple of albums, mainly because pop-rock music labels legally have to send their records out with chemical castration kits attached when you purchase them beyond the age of 25.

Anyway, without further ado: Viva Las Vengea-BZZZZZZZZZZZ

“Viva Las Vengeance”
Bad start because I’m already pissed off that the title track coming first kinda ruins the flow of my previous joke. I’m pressing play now.  

God, I can’t actually describe the pang of panic that rushed through me in the first two seconds of this when the drums kicked in and the animal part of my brain began to smile. Luckily the rest of the song happened and I’ve come out of it alive and without Viva Las Vengeance haunting my main Spotify playlist, but that was a genuinely scary moment. It’s strange, because it’s quite straightforward fast pop for most of the track - besides one moment where Serious Artist Brendon Urie can’t resist stripping things back to violins for a moment where you can can really hear his voice - but also, maybe due to these glee club backing vocals, it really sounds like a Christmas song. I have a specific song in mind (“Secret Santa” by Kids in Glass Houses), but I’m unsure whether I’m insane or if I’m onto something. Regardless, I missed an opportunity to put an exclamation mark at the end of the word panic in the first line of this paragraph, but it’s slower to turn around, and quicker to just finish.

“Middle of a Breakup”
Hahaha fuck. I started this song rolling my eyes at the lyrics opening with the word “Honeybee”, and I ended it with absolute faith in saying that, had this song be released on a hot summer in 1976, we would still be hearing it on Absolute Radio now, every single day, and it would drive me fucking insane. Urie has clearly been listening to some Springsteen, and his echoed vocals, plus the “My Sharona” style guitar in the third verse breakdown, make this rip-off/homage/tribute act a little too transparent. That’s not to say it’s a terrible song of course. I mean, it is, but if you were in the car on the way to Homebase with your dad and this came on the radio and he started tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, you wouldn’t be flinging yourself across the centre console to turn it off. It’s just one of those songs. Also, the chorus starts with the line: “Oh, shit, you’re kissin’ my neck, kissin’ my chest”, and all 70s music is just as tasteless as that, so I have to give him his dues.

“Don’t Let The Light Go Out”
What the fuck is going on? I’m gonna need you all to look away for a moment while I add this song to my Spotify Christmas playlist because something incredibly strange is happening here. If you played me the instrumental to this song and asked me who wrote it with a gun pressed to my forehead, I would tell you with utmost confidence that this is a sequel to Kelly Clarkson’s Christmas Banger of 2013: “Underneath the Tree”. Then you’d show me the lyrics and I’d pull the trigger myself. Actually, is that fair? I cringed when I first heard “You’re the only one who knows how to operate my heavy machinery”, but I think that’s just because I assumed he was implying a massive dong. Upon further listening, it’s actually quite a cute line about being all fucked up and only having one special person who gets you, man.
This is the best one so far.

“Local God”
Man, I really just need to insert some of the lyrics to the song here:

Are you melting face at the Bellagio? (Woah, oh, oh, oh)
Or are you teaching little kids how to rock 'n' roll (Woah, oh, oh, oh)
Did you get all weighed down by your heart of gold?
'Cause you really only cared about that
Wonder if you had a chance to sell your soul
Did you ever get your money back?
Did you ever kiss the devil?
Local God
You'll live forever as a local God

Patronising, cheesy, self-sucking bullshit. Oooh my fame isn’t as coooool as the guy who I vaguely remember playing shitty local shows at age 17! Oooh you’re the real winner here, Mr Not A. Millionaire! Cherish your failure! Your peasant life is so rock and roll!

Don’t really have anything else to say. This song sucks shit, fuck off.

“Star Spangled Banger”
Haha, great title, I’m BACK IN.
*song starts*
Oh no, oh fuck. OH GOD.

I’m gonna be real with you: I was half a second away from just skipping this song entirely when the first verse kicked in, and then I started laughing so hard I had to pause it anyway. I realise now that this is 100% a tribute album, of sorts. Elaborate Karaoke is what I’d call it. Just imagine a really rich guy who wanted to do karaoke of all his favourite 70s bands for his birthday, but in this world karaoke machines don’t exist, and he has a bad memory, so instead of doing normal karaoke he just kinda takes the vibe of each of his favourite tracks and copies it, throwing in some absolute dogshit lyrics along the way. For example, this song, “Star Spangled Banger”, is The Boys are Back in Town by way of a version of Thin Lizzy where Phil Lynott had CTE.

Okay you’re not gonna believe me but I paused the song about 50 seconds in and wrote the above paragraph, finished the paragraph, and pressed play again. At 1 minute 40, these are the lyrics:

Pretty Sam sat down next to me,
She asked if I could play her a song
When I didn't know the words, she said, "That's okay
Just play what you know, let it all go"

And about 10 seconds later, I have skipped the rest. Because this song has the worst chorus I’ve ever heard in my young, young life. If you don’t believe me, by all means listen away.

“God Killed Rock and Roll”
Oh like God Gave Rock and Roll To You, but twisted, right? I get it. Very good. Very funny Brendon, you 36-year-old man, you.

This song is actually very nakedly about how all the old rockstars are dead, so I guess I have to keep my snark to a minimum, but yeah this is exactly what you’d expect it to be from reading the track title. No nuance, nor depth. It’s a bit Queen-y, very Kiss-y, and incredibly Bad-y.

Brendon Urie releasing this shite in order to eulogise dead rockstars is akin to me releasing a tiger in a cinema to celebrate the success of Rocky (1976). You don’t understand the moving parts buddy. You’re making a terrible mess.

I just looked and there’s six more songs.

(:

“Say It Louder”
Okay so I’ll get it out of the way: not good. But there’s a lyric in here that goes:

Don't ever let 'em turn you down (turn it up, turn it up, rock city)

Two of the three times I saw Panic! live were at the most famous Nottingham club and venue Rock City. Also, this song is about the feeling you get when you’re at a gig and you’re singing along to your favourite band and you get that euphoric feeling, a feeling that you aren’t able to recreate at home, and that you can only remember fondly, until next time.

I remember very well the feeling I had the last time I ever saw Panic! live. I was on the balcony at Rock City with my older brother (I’m usually a pit guy but he’s vegetarian), and I felt like absolute shit. It was hot as hell in the room and I could feel the condensed crowd sweat dripping down onto me from the ceiling. Unfortunately, at this time in my life I had a very recent history of passing out for almost no reason (CTE?), so in an attempt to avoid embarrassing myself I visited the bar behind me during I Write Sins Not Tragedies and got myself a water. Except…the man didn’t pour me a water. He gave me a pre-poured water. And gang, I don’t know what was in that cup, but it did not taste like water. Within less than ten seconds of my first gulp I was out round the side of the wooden bar, throwing up into a corner at the top of the stairs. The beauty lay in the fact that no one able to hear me gagging and choking over the sound of Brendon doing his thing on stage, so I was able to empty my guts onto the floor and then return to my place on the balcony without detection.

Anyway, I’d rather do that again every single night than ever listen to this song again.

“Sugar Soaker”
Ah like supersoa-

If you close your eyes and pretend you’re in a much better place (Pandora?), the first 20 seconds of this could easily be the opening to a banger by Parquet Courts. You might think that sounds like a compliment, but I think if you are a bad band releasing bad songs, it is probably not a good idea to remind your listeners that they could be doing something worthwhile instead.

Honestly though, compared to the absolute swamp of shit that I’ve just waded through with the last four or five songs, this song is a breath of fresh air. Pure pop rock that isn’t really pretending to be anything else and also isn’t pretending to be better than it is. It’s probably the most pleasurable track on the album so far, and though that isn’t a compliment, it is the end of the review of this song.

“Something About Maggie”
In this track, Brendon dares to ask the question: “What would happen if you put The Beatles through Google Translate to Japanese, and then translated it back to English, and then did this process again about thirteen times?”

“Sad Clown”
Whenever I listen to the late career work of someone who was successful at a young age before burning out from too much attention and not enough self-honesty, I always inevitably end up wondering what was going through their head as they sat down to write the songs that would define their end. Did Brendon really write the lyrics to this song and feel the same burst of serotonin that I got when I nailed that tiger joke earlier? Did he smile to himself as he penned:

Your majesty's magnificent
My tragedy is imminent
Even though I'm smiling
I'm crying
Sick and tired of trying
I'm dying
Is this all there is?

Okay. Now that I’ve copied and pasted those lyrics and read them again, I actually feel kind of bad. I don’t think he’s smiling when he writes these songs. I think he’s frowning and I’m just beginning to realise it. Maybe this is why the entire album is just him revisiting and rehashing the music he presumably grew up with. Maybe this is why he spent an entire song lionising the people he knew when he was 17 and full of vigour. Maybe it isn’t self-sucking, maybe it is sincere self-flagellation. Brendon is caught between trying to recapture the things that used to bring him joy and trying to accept that those things are gone, along with the joy.

This might sound like I’m doing a bit but now I’m imagining some horrible twist of events where he reads this review and I feel terrible.

“All by Yourself”
Dogshit.

“Do It To Death”
I’m writing this section a day later than the rest. Last night I spent an hour rewinding and playing a 4 second clip of this song, trying to figure out what it reminded me of. It was Any Way You Want It by Journey. That’s a good song.

“Do It To Death” is a terrible, uninspired conclusion to a terrible, uninspired album. Brendon Urie is in his mid-30s and lives in a mansion in Vegas, but he’s still somehow managed to circle his career back around to a point where the most relevant career comparison would be fresh-faced 18-year-old English lads - kids who drink Buckfast at pres and write Arctic Fauxnkeys songs about trying to get a girl’s Instagram. You hear their songs and you’re like ‘Yeah, this does sound a bit like Mardy Bum’, but so what?’

At least those lads have the excuse of youthful naivety. A good chunk of them will probably grow up to be decent musicians. I’m sure we’ll even hear a couple of them on the radio in five years’ time, and then it will be their turn to grow tiresome. But Brendon has already done all of that. He’s had all of the practice, and all of the success, and this is still where he’s landed: Viva Las Vengeance.

Panic! at the Disco have split up since this album was released, and as a fan of their early stuff I would love to say that it’s a shame, and that 36 isn’t really that old, and that maybe they should make a Christmas album? But in reality: this is mercy for the fans; 36 isn’t old, but it also isn’t young; and Christmas albums don’t really sell these days unless you’re planning to murder Michael Bublé and wear his skin for the album art.

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