There aren’t many acts that could survive the turbulence of half the band quitting, but despite predictions that Panic! At the Disco would slink into chart purgatory, singer Brendan Urie and drummer Spencer Smith have defied the odds by not just surviving, but thriving as a two piece.

Making the brave move to reinstate the exclamation mark and hark back to the sound that made them famous, Panic! are back riding the high and lapping up the critical praise from their latest album ‘Vices and Virtues’, while their ever loyal army of fans grows bigger with each release. Ahead of their Soundwave Counter Revolution shows this month, we talk to Spencer about changes and vices.

MTV: Hi Spencer! You guys are heading down under pretty soon – it’s been a long time since you’ve been to Oz….
Spencer: It’s been too long, I know. It’s been longer than I would’ve liked… it actually looked like for a few weeks that it wasn’t going to happen because the festival [Soundwave Counter Revolution] was going to be cancelled. So that was a real disappointment for us because we love coming to Australia. And luckily they were able to sort it out.

MTV: The vaudeville theme, which you’ve used in your vid for ‘Ballad of Mona Lisa’ seems to be a constant theme for Panic. What is about that time period that speaks to you as a band?

Spencer: I guess we just have a fascination with time periods… If you go to any new building that’s being built, like a skyscraper, there’s no detail or artistic character, it’s just the cheapest way we can build the tallest building to make the most money. So you go back to these time periods where people put a lot of time and effort into the way they looked and dressed, that’s always appealed to us.

MTV: You’ve gone through a lot of changes in the last five months, how has being in a band of two members opposed to four changed the dynamic of how you make music?

Spencer: Well a couple of years ago that was a big question for us. We knew the idea of continuing the band wasn’t in question, but it was us realizing, that even though it’s the same name, its an opportunity for us to take the band wherever we want to, and focus in on what we want our record to be, and it is as good as we want it to be, because this is our first interpretation of what this new line up is.

It took us months to hone in on that and figure out what we wanted to do. So that’s why it took a lot longer than we expected. Once we got past that point and felt comfortable, with just the two of us writing, it was about nine months of working on the record, and all the time before that was just writing demos and talking about different ideas.

MTV: Tell me a little bit about your album name ‘Vices and Virtues’?

Spencer: It wasn’t a theme from the start, it kind of came in at the end. It came from us thinking about the year and a half that it took to get to that point and the bizarre situation that we had found ourselves in, right when the band split.

We’d come from this crazy three and a half year of everything going beyond our expectation and then everything all of the sudden being completely unknown, and then we found ourselves in this weird spot where it was like, wow, everything we just worked for is kind of out the window, what’s going to happen?

And at that moment its easy to fall back on old vices to help you get through it and then there’s certain aspects on the virtuous side that can help you get motivated and push yourself to move forward. It just seemed appropriate for the last couple of years that we’ve been through.

MTV: You talk about the uncertainty of that time when you were going through the changes, was there ever any question that you would dissolve completely?

Spencer: For me and Brendan we knew that we wanted to do something together, but we didn’t know if that was going to be Panic or not, so there was a month or two where we had no idea what we wanted to do, we needed time.

We’d come off touring for nine months, and it was like ok, besides the fact that we’d decided to split with the other guys, we needed time apart anyway… But when we got back together and decided that we wanted to continue working together musically, it made sense to keep on doing Panic~ because a lot of our influences, and a lot of what we were proud of and what we had worked towards was still in line with what the band had done. We still talk to Ryan and John, I saw Ryan just a month ago, so it really was a musical difference for the split, and it was pretty apparent they didn’t want to continue as Panic so it just made sense to us.

MTV: You guys have a huge fan base here and in New Zealand. What do you think it is that makes audiences down here resonate with your music?

Spencer: It’s tough because we live so far away and when we started touring oversees, you realize everywhere is different, everyone has their own radio, their own MTV, their own local bands that haven’t broke in other parts of the world… So for us to go so far away and have people be familiar with our band, it’s really exciting.

Source: MTV.com.au

1. Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon and Spencer Talk About The Band’s Breakup & Dennis Quaid at SXSW
2. Panic! At The Disco Talks Break-Up
3. Panic! At the Disco Move Beyond the Break-Up
4. German Interview with Spencer Smith
5. Ryland Blackinton Mentions Panic in Spring Break Experience

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