To say that
Panic! At the Disco's seventh album, 2022's
Viva Las Vengeance, is a love letter to rock & roll is to state the obvious about what is also one of their most thrilling and enjoyable records. Essentially a solo vehicle for singer
Brendon Urie since at least 2016's
Death of a Bachelor,
Panic! remains a conduit for his varied passions, touching upon post-emo dance-rock and Broadway-esque balladry. While
Viva Las Vengeance certainly retains those hallmarks, it's primarily focused on fist-pumping rock anthems, the kind that bands like
Queen,
T. Rex, and
Cheap Trick spilled across AM dials in the 1970s and '80s. These are hooky cuts, where
Urie frames his still angelically amped-up vocals in crunchy electric guitar riffs, wrestle-mania drumbeats, candy-coated synths, and even the occasional brassy flourish of a horn line. It's worth noting that
Urie recorded much of the album live to tape. While there were surely overdubs done later (not to mention swathes of operatically multi-tracked vocals), it has the crackling immediacy and organic texture of a classic vinyl album. The crate-digging vibe is unabashed, and you can almost call out the specific artists and songs that inspired each track. "Middle of a Breakup" has an
Elvis Costello-meets-
Raspberries energy, while "Sugar Soaker" is pure
AC/DC. Similarly evocative, the bombastic "Star Spangled Banger" has a jazzy verse that borrows knowingly from
Thin Lizzy's "Boys Are Back in Town."
Urie has always been a bigger-than-life persona, a romantic who self-mythologized from the start by draping himself in his idols, as with his early
Beatles fixation, or painting himself as the doomed
Sinatra-esque crooner on
Death of a Bachelor.
Viva Las Vengeance feels like an apotheosis of that process as
Urie looks back at his career and ruminates on who he was before his success and who he has become. It's a sentiment he underlines on "Local God," contrasting
Panic!'s rise to fame with someone who balked at the chance, singing "It's 2021 and I'm Almost Famous/You never really cared about that." A cheeky reference to director
Cameron Crowe's film that was itself described as a love letter to rock & roll, the song plays as a wry ode to rock failure. Ironically,
Urie was anointed by the golden rock gods, but what did that cost? And what did it feel like when emo's asymmetrical-haired moment faded and he was left to evolve with his core fans perhaps in limbo? He plays with these themes throughout the album, flirting with superstar burnout on the title track and declaring halfway through the record that "God Killed Rock and Roll," screaming "No blood on the stage/No Plant, no Page/Kiss them all goodbye."
Viva Las Vengeance is
Urie's amorous declaration to everything sumptuously mythic, exultant, tragic, and yes, even silly, about loving and aspiring to be a part of the rock & roll world. That
Urie is completely self-aware about his place in that world makes the album all the more delicious. ~ Matt Collar