When Panic! At The Disco founding member and lead songwriter Ryan Ross jumped ship in 2009 to indulge his 60’s jones, taking bassist Jon Walker with him, fans suspected that the band’s next album would be a retreat to the emo-electro grooves of their debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Now, two full years later, we have our answer in the form of Vices And Virtues, and while it isn’t the Beatle-pop Panic! At The Disco of Pretty. Odd., it’s not the “return to form” it’s been pegged as either. Vices And Virtues is a thing unto itself, a new incarnation that bears only a surface resemblance to either Panic(!) of old.

Which is not to say the band is operating in wholly foreign territory. Vices And Virtuesis divided into three suites by a pair of short instrumental riffs. The opening bundle comes closest to echoing Fever’s dance-y side; the skittering drums and frontman Brendan Urie’s signature cadence in the verses of “Let’s Kill Tonight” are eminently familiar, though the chorus is like nothing in their catalog, a Burton-esque drama of vamping strings that give way to a haunted chorale, melodrama turned to 11. “Hurricane” pulls the same trick, with a classic P!ATD verse giving way to a full-on disco chorus, all slap-bass octaves and funky guitar, Urie shouting the accusation “you’ll dance to anything!” over the fray, calling out either a scornful lover or a fickle fanbase. (Really, he should have no concerns with his fanbase here).

The second suite plays closest with the orch-pop of Pretty. Odd., especially on the stunningly gorgeous acoustic ballad “Always,” with drummer Spencer Smith’s minimalist kick-drum riff providing just enough back end to Urie’s “Blackbird”-inspired triplets and fingerpicking. It’s perhaps Urie’s finest moment as a songwriter to date; as lyricist who often strays into dense territory and frequently plays with vocal sound more than clear meaning, he’s never written a line so straightforwardly lovely as “I’m the light blinking at the end of the road // Blink back to let me know.” Elsewhere, “Trade Mistakes” could double as a late-period Fall Out Boy track with its bright melody and “I may never sleep tonight” refrain, though Urie’s distinctive voice brands the track pure Panic. Best of all is “Ready To Go,” a giddy whoosh of a dance track with a heavy 80’s vibe by way of crosstown compadres The Killers, full of plucked strings and a delay echoed guitar in the verses straight from the Flock Of Seagulls playbook. It’s a three minute head rush that rivals Panic classic “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage” for best-in-catalog status.

 By part three, all the old scripts have been tossed out the window. “Sarah Smiles” (no relation to the similarly-named Hall And Oates classic) marries an old-school Urie vocal melody with an accordion intro, mariachi horns and a vocal harmony in the refrain like something out of a Zombies song. And album-closer “Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met)” throws a children’s choir and synths into the mix, not to mention the album’s most memorable lyric— “ever since we met // I only shoot up with your perfume // it’s the only thing // that makes me feel as good as you do”— before closing in a coda that calls back to album opener “The Ballad Of Mona Lisa.”

Indeed, the aforementioned “The Ballad Of Mona Lisa,” whose music-box tinkle and beefy bassline quickly devolve into a radio-rock chorus coated in lacquer-stiff production, is the only real dud on the album. It’s a strangely unrepresentative choice for a the first single, stranger still in that the rest of the album is marvelously produced. Aside from that, it’s hard to find fault with much here. Urie’s penchant for occasionally using words that don’t quite mean what he seems to think they mean can be a pebble-in-shoe variety annoyance, but that’s really nitpicking.
 
Ultimately, Vices And Virtues is where Brendan Urie and Spencer Smith discover synthesis — if A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out was something wholly original, and ifPretty. Odd. was an album that mined the past a little too reverently, then this is where the band learns to combine both those instincts while simultaneously widening the palette they’re working with. P!ATD3.0 might not be the most immediately compelling of the band’s incarnations, but it’s the one most worth investing real time in. Vices And Virtues is a multifaceted album from a multi-capable band just now coming into their own. 

****/*****

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman