Remaining members of Vegas-born Panic! at the Disco moving forward with new album

The scene’s taken from “The Overture,” a six-minute short film set in what looks like some old Western town that Vegas-born pop rockers Panic! at the Disco recently released in advance of their new record “Vices & Virtues,” their third disc overall, which came out on Tuesday.

At its conclusion, singer Brendon Urie turns to his bandmate, drummer Spencer Smith, as they are about to embark on some unspoken journey, just the two of them, the rest of their motley crew having fallen off.

“I guess it’s just us then,” Urie says as they stand alone.

“It always has been,” Smith shoots back.

That’s a succinct enough encapsulation of where Panic’s at these days: Urie and Smith, going at it on their own.

In July of 2009, former Panic guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Walker left the band as the touring cycle for the group’s second album, “Pretty.Odd,” was coming to an end.

It came down to the most moldering of band breakup cliches: artistic differences, with Ross and Walker exploring a more vintage pop feel in a new band of their own, The Young Veins.

The move was a significant one, because Ross was the band’s primary songwriter and lyricist, and while Urie and Smith knew they wanted to continue making music together, they didn’t know if they would do so as Panic! at the Disco or if the band was done.

“I think that at the very beginning, a couple of years ago, we were unsure if we were going to keep going as Panic, if we were going to do a different project, what exactly we were going to do,” Smith says. “It took us a couple of months of just spending time writing to figure out what me and Brendon wanted the band to be.”

To hear Smith tell it, Ross’ decision to part ways with Panic wasn’t a surprise, so he and Urie weren’t caught off guard.

“When it happened, it had been building for a few months,” he says. “It kind of started at the tail end of recording ‘Pretty.Odd.’ It was becoming apparent that there were some pretty big differences stylistically between me and Brendon and Ryan and Jon. As we started writing new stuff, we’d have conversations, and I knew that Ryan wanted to at least do a side project or something like that. We just got together and talked about it and it was like, ‘It would kind of be a forced thing if we tried to do that and it’s probably just better, for our personal relationships as well, if we just went our own ways.’ ”

The split came at a time when the young band was already at a crossroads in its career.

Panic sold more than 2 million copies worldwide of their 2005 debut, “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” an album of bright, buoyant, emotive pop with snarky, often perilously long song titles, and eventually headlined arenas in support of the disc.

Panic’s 2008 follow-up, “Pretty.Odd,” saw them delve into a much more retro, Beatles-centric direction. They were still teenagers when they penned their debut, and their tastes in music had shifted as they’d matured. They weren’t listening to the same bands any more, and it showed on “Pretty.”

But Panic’s commercial prospects suffered with the record, which the band seemed to struggle somewhat to make, scrapping some early recording sessions and starting from scratch at one point.

Despite debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart the week of its release, the disc failed to reach gold status (signifying shipments in excess of 500,000) after its predecessor hit platinum.

In hindsight, Smith says that Panic ended up painting itself into a corner with the disc.

“When we were coming from ‘Pretty.Odd,’ we felt like it was too narrow of a box to be in,” he notes. “We were really excited about doing that record and recording it in the way that some of our favorite bands recorded albums, but once we were done with that and had it out of systems, we were just like, ‘I think we were too confined in what was allowed to be on there.’ We wanted to go back to the mentality that we had earlier on our first record where it was kind of like, ‘anything goes, there’s no rules, we can do any music style that we like.’ ”

It wasn’t easy getting to that point, however.

Urie and Smith took close to two years writing, recording and conceptualizing “Vices & Virtues,” a good deal of which was spent just trying to figure out where to take things now that they were the creative focal points of the band.

“Musically, it wasn’t that big of a change, because me and Brendon had been a big part of the music, even with the vocal melodies and things like that,” Smith says. “But for Brendon, lyrically, that was the biggest change and the biggest step he had to make. And that took a little time, for him to find his voice and what he wanted to talk about. Once we got to that point, we felt like we had a really good grasp on where we wanted to go.”

“Vices & Virtues” attests to this.

Though Panic’s sound has evolved since its debut, the disc does approximate the energy and enthusiasm of “Fever,” with the band sounding like they were mainlining caffeine during the recording sessions. The material is more diffuse and textured than Panic’s earlier tunes, however, and in that sense, builds upon where “Pretty.Odd” left off in terms of layering the band’s sound in dramatic strings and keys, with elaborately arranged songs contrasted with more straightforward pop adrenaline bursts.

The album certainly has a more spontaneous, off-the-cuff feel to it in places, which, according to Smith, is reflective of the atmosphere in which it was created.

“It was honestly like getting back to the fun that we had writing for the first record in our rehearsal space in Vegas, before we had ever toured, just not having any pressure of any eyes on you,” he says. “It did kind of feel like a new project, even though it was still Panic, it felt like a new band and we knew that fans would somewhat look at it like that as well, being a little bit unsure of exactly what it was going to be. That was actually nice. There was a little pressure, but I think it actually ended up being beneficial.”

Even though they were down a guitarist and bassist, Urie and Smith chose not to recruit full-time replacements for Ross and Walker, choosing instead to handle things on their own.

“We would have liked it to be a full band if that was possible, but it’s so hard to find those guys,” Smith says. “It goes so much beyond just musicians’ talents or whether you can play a certain part or sing a certain a harmony. It actually ends up being more about being able to get along with each other day in and day out. We didn’t have those guys who were just perfect to step in right from the beginning, so we knew that this record was just going to be us.”

Panic’s live lineup has been rounded out by guitarist Ian Crawford and bassist Dallon Weekes for some time now, though, and Smith hints that the two could eventually become permanent additions to the band.

“They’ve been playing with us for every show since we split with Ryan and Jon, and it’s turned into this thing where it’s felt really good, really natural,” Smith says. “I think we sound just as good as we ever did, so it could potentially turn into more of a full-time thing as we start to tour and write new material. I hope that it does.”

Speaking of touring, Panic recently announced a slew of spring and summer dates, with a stop at the House of Blues set for June 18.

The band plans to further embellish some of the theatrical elements that characterized their early shows, where they were joined by a cast of circus-worthy performers.

“It’s nice to try and put everybody in a different world for a little bit and make it our own spectacle for that night,” Smith says. “And then we’re gone the next day, like the firework stands on July 5th.”

In the meantime, Urie and Smith have a lot on their plates, their ambitions as outsized as the sound of their new record.

They all but acknowledge as much.

At the beginning of “The Overture,” as Urie is preparing to leave town, he has a final beer with Joe, the local bartender.

“Don’t beat yourself up if things don’t work out the way you planned,” Joe says by way of goodbye.

And with that, Urie exits the room with a smile, seemingly bent on having the last laugh.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.