Concert review: Panic! at the Disco take risk by playing new album in full at high-energy Xcel show

Ross Raihala, Pioneer Press
·2 min read
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Las Vegas rock band Panic! at the Disco took a novel approach to promoting their new album “Viva Las Vengeance” on Wednesday night at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center.

The group — which has been vocalist Brendon Urie and touring musicians since 2015 — opened and closed the show with mini sets of a half-dozen hits. In the time between, they played the new record in its entirety.

It was a gutsy move for sure. The band emerged in 2005 after Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz signed them to his label and took them on the road. PATD scored big with the emo crowd, but the band slowly fractured as Urie took control. Over the past decade, he transformed the group’s sound, adding heavy doses of Queen-style pomp, Rat Pack-esque crooning and Broadway bombast.

That new direction worked and PATD sold out the X and Target Center on tours in 2017 and 2018. Urie’s huge voice — he’s a tenor with a four-octave range — and onstage swagger helped sell huge, theatrical anthems to a new generation of fans.

Perhaps those new fans have aged out of the group? Wednesday, a crowd of about 7,500 showed up. And following two consecutive albums that hit No. 1, “Viva” sputtered out at No. 13, while its seven singles failed to find an audience.

Listening to Urie and his band — which includes horn and string sections — plow through “Viva” on Wednesday, it was tough to understand the fans’ resistance. It’s very much an ode to ’70s FM radio, with nods not just to Queen, but also to Cheap Trick, the Raspberries, Thin Lizzy, T. Rex and any number of other acts from the era. But it’s not that far removed from what the band’s been doing as of late.

“Viva” is packed with towering arena rock epics that Urie absolutely nailed. The most compelling moments, though, were the quieter ones. A song about a relationship ending in death, “Don’t Let the Light Go Out,” is easily the strongest of the bunch with a real emotional resonance. And “All by Yourself” is such a savvy, cheeky rehash of Eric Carmen’s classic “All by Myself,” they gave him a writing credit.

The crowd perked up at times during the new material, but often sat in quiet reverence. But the older stuff — almost all from the past decade — got massive responses, from “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” to “High Hopes.” Many prompted audience sing-alongs as well, including the 2015 Sinatra tribute “Death of a Bachelor.”

It remains to be seen if Urie’s ploy of playing all of “Viva Las Vengeance” will spark renewed interest or if it will be the turning point where Panic! at the Disco slide into nostalgia act territory.

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