Panic article in "Piranha"

[herzverstreut_bu]

I randomly picked up "Piranha" yesterday, a free music mag, and it had a short article about Panic. The writing is delightfully bad (at least they got most of the facts right, unlike certain others *cough*siegessäule*cough*) and I thought some of you might get a kick out of it, so I translated. This post brought to you by "Take your fucking early morning construction work elsewhere and let me sleep, dammit."

Panic at the Disco - Make love, not emo

"You don't have to worry, 'cause we're still the same band," Panic at the Disco belt out on the intro to their second album, "Pretty. Odd." You may say that's an outright lie. Two years after the beginning of their career, the whippersnappers [I honestly don't know how else to translate "Jungspunde". JUNGSPUNDE. Seriously, who wrote that?] did a 180 degree turn. Wow.

The sound coming out of the headphones is colourful like a butterfly and quite astonishing. No lie, Panic's new songs are so secret that we journalists, who were invited to the label's office for a listen, are not allowed to listen to them on speakers. Just to make sure nobody tapes anything! Which says everything about the status that Brendon Urie, Ryan Ross, Jon Walker and Spencer Smith have reached in just 24 months. Just a moment ago they were four teenagers, imitating their idols in a Las Vegas garage, boldly shredding the emo-blueprints with nods to discopunk and folkpop. In their songs they zigzagged through paces, directions and rhythms like a teenager with ADS zapping through 78 music stations. In songwriter Ryan Ross they had a splendidly talented lyricist, who put his dissatisfaction with all the dishonesty around him into lines that others would sell as short stories. That was really good and, just freshly published, hit a nerve with the Bush era kids. Young, stylish, clever and right on the pulse of time - quickly, 1,6 million CDs were sold and screaming teenage hearts broken. This rocket-like take off has to be surpassed now, hence the high security level.

But apart from Brendon's voice and the boys' continually irrepressible lust for experimentation, "Pretty. Odd." does not have much in common with the debut. Which isn't a problem, since this is a land of plenty [Cockaigne? Land of milk and honey? I'm unclear about the exact translation of "Schlaraffenland."], full of melodies, opulent sounds, crisp pop hits, clever ideas. But Panic don't put their faith into their old trademarks anymore. Instead of fidgety beats these songs have clear structures, instead of unambiguously cynical lyrics a psychedelic calmness prevails, and next to the typical ripping guitars there's whistling and fiddling, cellos, bells and steel guitars are used. "Pretty. Odd." is all over the place, bombastically arranged, a 2008 combination of "Mellon Collie" and the "Magical Mystery Tour". A stunning package of music that lives up to the place of its creation, London's legendary Abbey Road studios. But isn't it reckless to throw overboard all the trademarks that worked so well the first time? Ryan Ross: "Well, we didn't say, ok, now we're going to change our sound. We just wrote our songs, and they turned out different than our earlier songs. Change happens to every band. What we did two years ago was two years ago. This us us now. I think a lot of people get that." "There are too many cool instruments in the world not to use them," Jon Walker thinks. "Experimenting is great, but we don't get off to the thought of creating the craziest sounds possible. Each instrument needs to work in context. There is the difference, though, that this time we knew there was an audience out there that would listen." Ryan: "Right. With the lyrics, for example, we consciously said: There are so many negative bands in the world, let's make a point and counter that with something positive. The mood in this band is very optimistic lately. We share the feeling that things are getting better. Sometimes we even sing complete nonsense, where the words are carried by the melody. We're not taking ourselves so seriously anymore."

You'd have to read (and understand) the German article for a full taste of the weird phrases they used, but I tried to do my best. (And sorry there are no scans, still can't get my scanner to work - but it only had the usual promo pic, anyway.)

Comments

[darksylvia.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thanks for translating!

Cockaigne

Ahahahahaha. The cookbook my roommate has uses that word all the time--we had to look it up online to figure out wtf they were talking about. Turns out the crazy writers had named their HOME after that mythical place and so referenced it freely. Obviously, this writer is partaking of the same crack pipe.