By Ryan Broderick
Apparently we’re hitting the first wave of proto-nostalgia for 2005 radio emo. Both Panic(!) at the Disco and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump have new releases out. Both have thinned out their ranks considerably: Panic(!) At The Disco is now a two person studio band, and Patrick Stump is obviously on his own.
Vices & Virtues by Panic(!) At The Disco is a pile of garbage. Actually, raccoons eat garbage and seem to enjoy it, plus you can recycle garbage into something new and useful. It’s hard to imagine any living thing actually finding something of value or use in Vices & Virtues.
If you haven’t heard it, it’s streaming on their Facebook page, which you can listen to in exchange for a “like.” Just so all of your friends know you’re an idiot before you even listen to the damn thing. If you want to save yourself some Facebook shame, here’s the formula they use for every single song on the album:
Drum machines and synth verse, radio rock chorus, drum machines and synth verse, radio rock chorus, orchestral flourishes in the bridge, radio rock chorus with synths and some orchestral nonsense. Rebecca Black’s “Friday” is more innovative.
Panic(!) At The Disco created a style of music—was it good music? Absolutely not, but they did make something a lot of people liked. They went away for a while and dropped an exclamation point and then made something kind of interesting again with Pretty. Odd. So, they’ve always been kind of a novelty.
Vices & Virtues, though, is a GarageBand-produced, humorless pile of mid-’00s dance rock that seems like it was made entirely for 13-year-old girls. Or they’re now exclusively making albums to sell goth, Hello Kitty underwear at Hot Topic (those still exist, right?). So, either Panic(!) At The Disco are statutory rapists, owners of a little girl fashion line or terrible musicians. While listening to Vices & Virtues, it’s actually kind of tough to decide which one is true.
Patrick Stump has an EP out called Truant Wave. It’s out in lieu of a full-length titled Soul Punk (ew).
His reasoning is, “If I’m going to disappoint people by not [making] Take This to Your Grave, Part II, I would rather do that before Soul Punk, because that record means something to me,” Stump told MTV news. Well, he succeeded; Truant Wave is not a seminal mid-’00s pop punk album that defined a whole generation of bands, for better or worse.
It’s an idiotic mess.
Truant Wave would be pitiful if it even deserved pity. It is a redundant hodgepodge not-quite-ironic-enough-’80s-electro, strange world beats, completely unnecessary auxiliary procession and absolutely deranged hip hop. Oh, also, apparently Stump thinks he’s Michael Jackson.
It guest stars Alph-A-Bit, Om’mas Keith and D.A. & Driis. That’s nice, but it’s pretty safe to assume that anyone this album was made for will not know or care about who those people are.
So, what’s the point, right? Who cares if Panic(!) At The Disco made an album with Kidz Bop quality songwriting and Patrick Stump decided he wanted to make an EP dedicated to Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”?
Because a lot of people fell in love with their former work in high school. Why couldn’t they just do us all a favor and go away, learn a new trade or something. But perhaps it’s as Stump puts it on the fifth track of Truant Wave, “As Long As I’m Getting Paid.” Yeah, seems like it.