Panic at the Disco thrills teenage brood

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      Panic At The Disco

      At the PNE Forum on Friday, June 6

      Gone are the days when corporate sponsorship was something on the back of a concert ticket or stamped on a disposable drink cup. Never has this change been so pronounced than at Panic At The Disco’s Honda Civic Tour last Friday at the PNE Forum. On a night where flashy car commercials and opportunistic music-video plugs for the performers were splashed across a 20-foot-high projection screen, it was hard not to feel uneasy about an event that seemed as much a cross-marketing wet dream as a multi-band tour package.

      Playing to a small but eager crowd of fans—no doubt happy to have left mom and dad waiting outside in the family station wagon in the Forum’s parking lot—Los Angeles’s Phantom Planet enticed the crowd with catchy hooks and disco punk. The set’s highlight came when the four-piece started into the keyboard-heavy “California”, which immediately received a cheering roar as young girls bounced to The OC theme song, visions of Adam Brody dancing in their head.

      Fans were still trickling in as the Hush Sound took the stage. (Or at least that was the assumption; the lofty Forum would later prove to be far too expansive for the tour’s meagre Vancouver following, as was the on-site beer garden, which could have been made into a beer table and still accommodated every patron of drinking age at the event.)

      Owing much of its appeal to the commanding vocals of pianist Greta Salpeter, the Chicago quartet delighted with jangling guitars and spunky choruses, both of which were all over songs like “As You Cry” and “Sweet Tangerine”. Taking a quick detour to the land of cabaret, Salpeter was particularly impressive on the sultry “Honey, the first single from Hush Sound’s new album Goodbye Blues. And although it was hard not to roll your eyes at the sight of bassist Chris Faller violently launching a tambourine into the air at the end of the band’s set, his attention-begging antics were nothing compared with the maniacal headbanging of Motion City Soundtrack’s synth player, Jesse Johnson.

      Clearly more excited about the Minneapolis quintet’s bouncy pop than the “action” in the crowd itself, Johnson whipped his hair around and pounded the air like he’d just gotten back from gigging with Poison. It was a bizarre complement to the band’s upbeat melodies, but one that certainly added excitement to the overpowering emo-declarations of “Last Night” and the 2005 hit “Everything Is Alright”.

      The real excitement of the night came when headliners Panic At The Disco took to the stage, causing the teenaged fans to scream like a buck-naked Pete Wentz had just dropped from the Forum rafters. Despite promises of a stripped-down stage show, the Las Vegas quartet (accompanied by a keyboardist for the tour) performed their reinvented emo amongst Wizard of Oz–like foliage, glowing Christmas lights, and high-powered bubble machines. Although not as extravagant as the burlesque dancers and stilt-walkers of past tours, this was hardly a simplified affair.

      Without so much as a smudge of eyeliner, the men of Panic—looking like they just got back from the Summer of Love with their tight pants, button-up shirts, and hippie vests—played a dazzling set of ’60s-inspired songs from their sophomore release, Pretty. Odd. The band thrilled the hormonally charged hordes with “Nine In The Afternoon” (a glossy rendition of Sgt. Pepper’s–era Beatles which Yoko would have no problem demanding royalties from) and “That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)” (a paint-by-numbers pop concoction complete with swinging chorus. Later, “Folkin’ Around”—a rootsy number with plenty of tambourine—made it clear that Panic at the Disco has indeed matured over the past couple of years. Even the emo anthem “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”, from the band’s 2005 debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was noticeably calmer than on record, reflecting the outfit’s new preference for classic rock ’n’ roll.

      The night was best summed up when frontman Brendon Urie, after an energetic encore, called out “Drive safely”, a line those marketing executives at Honda no doubt spent weeks locked up in a boardroom perfecting.

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