Nonsequitur Life

According to WordPress there are 221 revisions on this post. That might be some sort of record.

This thing has a way higher word count than I ever expected it to for what I originally wanted to write. Granted I can’t imagine the word count function on this platform is terribly accurate considering all of the HTML tags, links, and alt-text crammed in here. I have no idea how it handles that.

Still.

It’s excessive.

BUT I WROTE IT.

I can’t really complain too much though, because as dumb as this whole disaster turned out to be, it is NOT a lead-in to the monthly Last.fm stats. (Shh, I know. Pretend that’s normal.) And the wall of text that ensues has provided a dopamine rush to the brain that I don’t get to experience much these days.

The summer of 2019 was a miserable hell revisiting Zoloft and trying Lexapro with both ending in epic failure (then being told I have Treatment Resistant depression) and my brain has not been the same since. And not at all in a good way. I spent the better part of three or four months doing little more than literally staring at the wall, playing a stupid Farmville game, and listening to Panic! At the Disco on repeat after discovering I apparently like the music.

Who knew?

I didn’t.

Three years later, I eventually stopped playing the farm game, but I still find myself randomly staring at the wall for extended periods of time. And I still listen to Panic! on repeat.

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You heard me.

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Side effects may include…

R: You’re going to get off this medication and think, “Man, Panic! At the Disco sucks.”

S: Zoloft causes shitty taste in music.

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We’re not even in a pandemic yet…

R: I know my hair is getting too long, it’s getting in my eyes.

S: You’re starting to look like an EMO kid. Is it because I’ve been listening to Panic! At the Disco?

R: Yes. It’s your fault.

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Recipe for success…or disaster…

R: [nodding along to the music]

PatD: Champagne, cocaine, gasoline.

R: I like those things together too.

S: It’s a good combination.

R: These things rhyme. Let’s make it a song.

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Ehh, close enough…

R: Is this Panic!?

S: No this is Fall Out Boy.

R: The Munsters theme was a little off-putting. It sounded like it could be one of their weird-ass songs.

S: To be fair, they’re pretty much interchangeable. And Brendon Urie is in half their music videos.

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Kid had balls, I’ll give him that…

S: [singing] I’ve got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck…

R: What were you saying?

S: I was just singing along to terrible music.

R: What are these lyrics? I just heard something about stomach acid.

S: Welcome to the mind of eighteen-year-old Ryan Ross.

R: No. I don’t want to go in there.

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Bob isn’t much of a Panic! fan but he gave me the Brendon Urie Funko Pop as a surprise because he likes to fuel the fixations that amuse me to no end. I bought myself the Patrick Stump Pop because Patrick Stump is adorable and Brendon needed his vocal twin to hang out with. I found their crystal bear friend when we did some major cleaning at my Aunt Mary’s house and she said take whatever you want and one can never have too many bears. Also I had to make Brendon his own custom stand for stability because he is very dramatic and falls over with the slightest hint of air movement. Probably because those leather pants are cutting off all his circulation below the waist.

ANYROAD.

Panic! At the Disco put out a new album and I have some scattered, incoherent thoughts about it all. Which I’m pretty sure is what Brendon Urie said when he brought these songs into the studio to record.

Admittedly, the first time I listened to the whole thing it was four-something in the morning and I hadn’t slept. My initial review was just What the hell Brendon? The fuck did I just listen to?

After hearing the four songs released in the lead-up (or really, any of the previous albums), I was definitely not expecting any sort of life-altering lyrical genius to grace my ears. Pray For the Wicked suffered from Too Many Cooks with roughly eight people credited as writers on almost every song. Looking at the credits for this album, Viva Las Vengeance pared down the participants a great deal by comparison. (That might just be the result of creating an album in the middle of a pandemic.) In theory, that should be an improvement, but I don’t know if it was, or if the new album is just a different animal entirely. (And now thinking about some of the credits on Vengeance, I wonder if some of the Wicked songs have so many writers because of sampling? Still. Say Amen lists FIFTEEN people. STOP THAT.)

Every single song has at least some element that sounds incredibly familiar, but I don’t KNOW music and my useless Etch-a-Sketch brain doesn’t let me retain a goddamn thing when I need it to. There is so much that I can’t quite place, but I don’t know if it is stuff that I’ve actually heard before (sampling galore!) or if certain things are just…heavily inspired…by other works. There’s no such thing as an original idea, but there’s inspiration and there’s blatant usage. I actually jotted down random this sounds like… thoughts I had while listening. Those notes are even less coherent than all that they produced here.

So.

Track by track. (Or the not-so-brief summary.)

01.) The first time I listened to Viva Las Vengeance I was too distracted by the video to really comprehend what I was hearing until the Capetown chorus made a sudden appearance and now every single time I hear it, I only hear THAT song. Also, I’ll admit, I had to google Sativa because I first assumed it was just some current day artist I had never heard of. Nope. It’s weed. I know exactly jack about weed. Regardless, it just set the scene for the whole album to be very…on brand for what I have come to expect from this kid. Also, shut-up and go to bed…did Sheep write this song?

02.) The video for Middle of a Breakup intersperses a Grease homage with a decidedly unstable couple, and while they are very cute, the other stock imagery shoe-horned into the mix incited a rather violent facepalm reaction. I will say that for a song overtly about sex, I am impressed that Brendon kept his clothes on the entire time. Maybe he’s outgrown his need to strip in front of the camera. Keep your disco (like 70’s disco? Or Panic! At the?) Gimme T.Rex. (like the band?) The song is poppy and fun and he is probably one of the few who can pull off that chorus without sounding like a complete douche canoe. There’s also drums in the beginning that sound like Hallelujah, so even his own songs are up for the sampling. But the most relatable part of it all is toward the end of the video when mechanic BrendonBoyd is fuming over the car (and probably girl) problems and I felt solidarity because we (The Bobs TM) have been battling Joel the Obstinate and Cursed Jetta TM all fucking summer.

03.) The initial reaction to Don’t Let the Light Go Out instantly made me think of Last Kiss. (Wayne Cochran, J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, Pearl Jam—pick your poison) And while the theme doesn’t quite line up, that’s where my mind went before I even saw the video and that feels very similar to Nicotine. Though the overall sound does fit the 60’s era of Last Kiss. It’s emotional and depressing and probably the best song on the album, but that heavy machinery line just derails everything every time it comes up. But again, very on brand. (Since I first started writing this, he performed this song on the VMAs and it was actually a pretty solid performance. But JEEZUZ Brendon how do you breathe in those pants?)

04.) Is Local God about Ryan Ross? I don’t mean in the psychotic fandom omfg-they-are-so-in-love sense. I mean, Wikipedia tells me Ross got his first guitar at age twelve, which would have been in 1998. The year I graduated from high school. It’s clearly about the band as it was in the beginning, but is the YOU directed at anyone specific? The terrifying fandom certainly worships RR like some sort of god even though he seems to have mostly disappeared from public view. (Seriously, fans of this band are the most fucking terrifying gatekeepy people I have ever had the misfortune of scrolling across on the Instagram explore page.) Anyway. The song. It’s a little too fast and a little too scream-y, but for me it ranks up there with Don’t Let the Light Go Out as one of the best songs on the album.

05.) When I first saw the track list for the album, I read Star Spangled Banner and I was very confused. And honestly, I was a bit worried that he was going to go all Fergie and “make it his own” like some kind of asshole. It took two or three more times to read the title correctly as Star Spangled Banger. The opening of this song (the drums especially) reminds me of something and it’s right there but I cannot place it. Then it breaks into the first verse and hello, Thin Lizzy and rebellious teenage Brendon. The guitars are very 70’s rock, but the transition between the chorus and the verses is kind of jarring.

06.) God Killed Rock and Roll starts out with this choral that reminds me of the Whos singing in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and then it leads right into a whole lot of Queen—Somebody to Love, Don’t Stop Me Now, We Are the Champions, Bohemian Rhapsody all immediately come to mind. Then it falls into Meatloaf and some glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife which just makes me want to hear Brendon try to cover Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Is anything actually being sampled, or is it just different enough to skirt the rules? There’s more 70’s guitars, name-checking Robert Plant and Jimmy Paige, Buddy Holly and plaster casters (that’s another Today I Learned), and more references to the band as it once was, and despite the chaos, it works. Somehow.

07.) Hoo boy. Say It Louder starts as Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Fall Out Boy’s Take Over The Breaks Over, and The Police’s Can’t Stand Losing You and maybe Roxanne, among others. All at the same time. And then a little bit of FOB’s Rat a Tat or something else chant-y I can’t identify off the top of my head. Every time he says Hey Kids my brain wants to follow it up with Spelling is fun! But overall so much of it just feels like The Police. And probably some Queen. There’s a lot of Queen on this album. But that ee-oh-whoa at the end is totally The Police.

08.) Is Sugar Soaker about drugs? I think it might be about drugs. And the woman he was banging in the process? I don’t know. The opening guitars are another one of those so fucking familiar that feels like it should be so obvious. He referenced T.Rex back in Middle of a Breakup and now there’s a lot of Bang a Gong (Get It On) in this song. There is also a lot of Will Ferrell caliber cowbell happening. His delivery of you’re all of the above, baby reminds me of Gavin DeGraw. Gimme velveteen metal (like Velvet Revolver?) STP—considering they’re both Scott Weiland? Which…fits with my theory. And then Ate my ELO-oh-oh…like…the band? But you ate them? It really leans into the 70’s/80’s guitar riffs, but I have no idea what any of these lyrics mean. (I googled sugar soaker and aside from bath bombs, only got results for this song, but I did not dig too deep through the list because I really don’t actually want to know.) Hold up—in the time it took me to write all this nonsense, he released a video for this song. Ah yes, 1970’s drunk fest and an intoxicated car crash. Hm. Hilarious. I was not off the mark in my assumptions apprently. Anyway.

09.) Something About Maggie is something about an abusive relationship? Or her boyfriend is just a putz and Brendon is jealous? I’m not sure. Or it’s just more drugs. I kind of assume any song I don’t understand is about drugs. (See: previous song.) I hear more Queen—Flash Gordon really sticks in my head for reasons. There’s also something from The Beatles—Got to Get You Into My Life and Eleanor Rigby at first thought. I know whippits are huffing from aerosol cans, but are glitter whippits somehow worse? Is there such thing as canned glitter? And are people huffing it? Either way it has Mamas and Papas shitting bricks. Because master of prose Sir Urie is not. (Bob just caught me huffing the liner notes of this album and snickered at me. I do love the smell of fresh liner notes.)

10.) Sad Clown has some more of those parts that are driving me insane that blah, blah, dead horses. Especially the guitars. And there’s some Italian I had to run through Google translate. I get more Queen (more Flash Gordon), maybe some more from The Police, and the delivery of LEAVE ME ALONE is clearly from Into the Unknown, which I’m guessing is why the people who wrote that song are credited as co-writing this one? And then suddenly The Monkees show up with The Porpoise Song and that was before I saw the video and the end when he’s in the water and that just feels straight out of the ending of Head.

11.) All by Yourself in title alone made me automatically think of All By Myself and yep. It’s there. Eric Carmen gets a writing credit. I hear more from The Beatles—In My Life and A Day in the Life stand out. There’s also a little Steven Tyler delivery in there too. (We won’t talk about how many times I typed Stephen Tyler before I got it right.) There’s more pieces I can’t identify but the lyrics tell a better story. (Being an outcast and owning it?) It’s a lot slower and less erratic than most of the other songs.

12.) I’ll be honest, in title I automatically assumed Do It To Death was going to be overtly about sex. But it’s not? I don’t think? It’s more living life in excess? Maybe? Here we have Kenny Loggins and I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man). Also I hear more bits of Queen and Meatloaf and for some reason School House Rock keeps sneaking in there. Maybe some Styx? Pat Benatar? Definitely some 80’s guitars. And then it closes out with the strings and shut up and go to bed of the title track. And I guess we’ve come full circle?

In summation:

SENSORY.

OVERLOAD.

It’s erratic and confusing and a little too scream-y in parts and there is so much that sounds so bloody familiar and feels like it should be so obvious but Etch-a-Sketch brain will not allow identification. It doesn’t quite feel like a concept album. It’s more like a brain purge. It feels like a fever dream soundtrack to some ill-conceived cinematic musical in the vein of Sgt. Pepper or Tommy. Except Brendon is probably a more convincing overly emotive actor than the performances in those movies.

Every listen kicks up more thoughts of hey wait. I can’t even imagine how many other references I missed because I am so utterly clueless (and appallingly distracted) in so many ways. I started writing this on August 19th—the day the album came out—with a lot of starting and stopping and walking away because oh hey ADHD go fuck yourself. Also there were several days of obnoxious internet problems that completely derailed my entire existence in addition to progress on this monstrosity.

There’s so much more I could probably prattle on about for every song, but I’d probably have to have a dedicated post to each individual track, and while that is actually tempting, that is not going to happen. (Because if I did decide to do that, I would have to have every post written before I published even one because otherwise I’d get one done and the rest just wouldn’t happen because that is the way my brain functions. Or doesn’t as the case may be.) Considering how many revisions this thing has at this point I really just need to STAHP.

Anyway.

I’ll give him credit for saying to hell with the tried and true formula. It takes balls. I don’t know if it’s eighteen-year-old, hundred-pound Ryan Ross claiming to be the greatest fuck of all time level of balls, but balls nonetheless. Every album under the Panic! name departs from the last, but this one definitely felt like a leap more akin to the dramatic shift that happened between A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and Pretty Odd.

It’s not bad, but it’s not my favorite. It’s growing on me. And I’ll probably run it into the ground for another week or two before I take a break. If I’m looking for consistent repeats I’ll stick with the trio of Vices and Virtues, Too Weird to Live Too Rare to Die, and Death of a Bachelor. (The Weird Bachelor Vices playlist.) Collar Full will always hit that John Hughes spot for me. (Youtube is constantly asking you wanna watch this one again? And I’m all it’s not even really a video, but yes, always.)

It’s interesting to me that Pray For the Wicked is just kind of left out considering it was fucking High Hopes that I heard on the radio that started all this nonsense in the first place. It think it was the first album I listened to in its entirety when I plummeted into the blackhole, but it fell kind of flat for me compared to the others. And that includes the Fever album which held the song that I first heard so many years ago that made me say, MEH when it came to this band. (Though I’d probably choose Wicked over Vengeance if those were my only options.)

And I really didn’t think I was going to write three-thousand-some-odd words about Panic! At the Disco but here we are.

So many albums I’ve WANTED to write incoherent-stream-of-consciousness reviews for and THIS is the one I finally got done.

This is my brain and welcome to it.

Now it’s time for the monthly Last.fm stats.

Just kidding.

Here’s Wonderwall.

See, it’s funny because so many people think Brendon Urie and Darren Criss look so much alike.
(Maybe if you take Brendon in the Ready to Go video and Darren on Glee.)

Also, jokes are funnier when you have to explain them.

Listen.

This website exists solely for my amusement.

I should probably just shut up and go to bed.

*ahem*

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Do it to Death Panic! At the Disco