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Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

Pray For The 
Wicked

Panic! at the Disco

Fueled By Ramen

I would like to preface this review 
by stating I am the person at Daily 
Arts least expected to write it. I am by 
no means a Panic! fan; it wasn’t until 
recently that I finally put together 
that the “closing the goddamn door” 
song was their “I Write Sins Not 
Tragedies.” For the longest while, 
the band was nothing more than 
word association for me: If someone 
said “Panic! At The Disco,” I thought 
Brendon Urie. Besides his name and 
his Broadway stint performing in 
“Kinky Boots,” I knew nothing about 
the man. I always assumed there was 
at least two or three other bandmates 
to round out Panic, but it looks like 
now that’s not even true.
I would say I took on this review 
to write out of my musical comfort 
zone, write about something that 
doesn’t have its roots in hip hop or 
R&B, but I won’t beat around the 
bush with this review’s little secret: I 
decided to sign up for it because my 
wonderful girlfriend is a huge Panic! 
At The Disco fan. So, without further 
ado, I present the thoughts of a Panic! 
neophyte (happily blinded by love) 
on their latest release, Pray For The 
Wicked.
From an initial listen of the album, 
it’s clear Mr. Urie was inspired by his 
time under the spotlight and his love 
for musicals in general. The sound of 
Pray For The Wicked is grounded in 
peppy horns, backed by unobtrusive 
basslines and drum patterns, the sort 
of triumphant live instrumentation 
commonly 
heard 
in 
Broadway 
recordings. At times, it seems like 
the album could be easily adapted to 
a stage production. The question is, 
would the overarching story of that 
musical be any good?
It seems like the only thing Urie has 

to say on Pray For The Wicked is that 
he’s made it; he’s overcome adversity 
and avoided pitfalls that stop most 
starving artists dead in their tracks. 
While some tracks contain slight 
musings on his religious roots, past 
relationships and the wasteful nature 
of drugs and alcohol, most refer back 
to Urie’s rise to stardom.
Brendon Urie has basically become 
a one-man show, so it’s no denying 
that the lyrical content was written 
by him and was majorly influenced 
by his life up to this point. That’s not 
to say Urie comes off as self-centered 
with a Father John Misty-sized ego, 
though. Pray For The Wicked seeks 
to be inspirational, with most of the 
songs functioning as celebrations of 
following your dreams and finding 
success, and reminding the listener 

to never be complacent and always 
aim higher. This is immediately 
made clear, as Urie shouts “Fuck a 
silver lining / ‘cause only gold is hot 
enough” just 12 seconds into the 
opening track.
Urie incorporates his life story into 
this symphony of encouragement: He 
was “shooting for the stars when [he] 
couldn’t make a killing” on the chorus 
of the insanely upbeat “High Hopes,” 
the mania of his “Roaring 20s” 
eventually resulted in him finding 
an accepting new home on Broadway 
and he even named on one of the 
songs “Hey Look Ma, I Made It.” The 
one song not grounded in some form 
of positivity is album closer “Dying 
In LA,” which explores a different 
side of following your dreams, the 
one that only results in lost hope and 

breaking under pressure. In ending 
the album with this hackneyed a 
maxim — fame is not all it’s cracked 
up to be — one realizes that Urie 
does not have much original to say 
throughout the whole of the album. 
It’s the same motivating shindig 
that’s been thrown thousands of 
times before.
Yet music doesn’t have to be 
complex 
and 
embellished 
with 
original meaning to be good. Pray 
For The Wicked lacks real cohesion 
and comes off as more a collection 
of songs than an album, but it isn’t 
supposed to be some profound 
narrative that lands it a top spot on 
multiple end-of-the-year lists. Panic’s 
music has always been designed to 
be sung along — individual verses 
are often whispery, slower and not 
terribly indicative of Urie’s incredible 
vocal talent, while the high notes and 
riffing are reserved for the choruses. 
It’s almost like Urie knows his fans 
are going to want to belt out the 
catchy chorus and match his cadence, 
so he rewards those who know all the 
words a chance to rest their voices 
with the intermediary verses.
While Pray For The Wicked 
doesn’t entice me to test my singing 
capabilities, that’s OK: I am not the 
target audience. The album sustains 
the same playful intensity most major 
musicals reserve for their vigorous 
bookending 
numbers, 
with 
the 
occasional sprinkle of an emotional 
ballad here and there. Brendon Urie 
knows his music doesn’t have to be 
nuanced high art, so instead with his 
latest effort as Panic! At The Disco, 
he focuses on refining his fun, catchy 
pop rock sound. Although it doesn’t 
particularly toot my horn, hearing 
it play in the car with my girlfriend 
singing along from the passenger seat 
certainly does bring a smile to my 
face.

‘Pray For The Wicked’ is 
fun, easy listening for all

MUSIC REVIEW

FUELED BY RAMEN

ROBERT MANSUETTI
Summer Senior Arts Editor

CLARA SCOTT
Daily Arts Writer

“Let’s turn off the blue lights,” 
Iceage frontman Elias Bender 
Rønnenfelt 
muttered 
at 
the 
beginning of their show last Friday. 
Suddenly, the patient audience at 
El Club was plunged into darkness. 
Illuminated by the red glow of 
the stage, Rønnenfelt and his 
bandmates were magnetic, a sickly-
sexy collection of thin, stylish 
Danes 
with 
serious 
presence. 
Packed into the small Mexicantown 
venue, the crowd was hanging on to 
their every move in a shifting mass 
of noise and color. There are those 
who say punk is dead, but really 
it’s just different — now a spirit of 
pure emotion, anger and joy fused 
together into sound. That’s what 
Iceage does best.
Formed in 2008 in Copenhagen, 
the band’s first three albums were 
a mix of punk rigor and rambling, 
artistic soundscapes. Rønnenfelt’s 
signature drawl moves through 
each and every song on seemingly 
only instinct. Their 2011 debut 
garnered critical acclaim from 
industry legends like Lester Bangs 
himself, setting them onto a path of 
success and earning them a devoted 
following. In early May, Iceage 
released a fourth studio record 
titled Beyondless, and the growth 
was clear. A perfect mesh of discord 
and atmosphere, the album is a 
high point for the group, and this 
was all but obvious at their show 
supporting it.
After an opening act comprised 
of Detroit noise collective Wolf Eyes 
and the soothing, looped beauty of 
harpist Mary Lattimore, Iceage 
brought down the house one song 
after another. It was as if each tune 
from Beyondless had been reduced 
down to an essence, the expansive 
scale of their studio production 
boiled down into a series of 
thumping beats, thick basslines and 
eerie, yet moving guitar riffs. That 
isn’t to say their live performance 
isn’t just as striking. If anything, it is 

a perfect translation of the intensity 
their recordings evoke. 
Rønnenfelt was born to be 
a frontman. Dressed in a beige 
twill suit and thin linen shirt, his 
eyes light behind a veil of sweat-
laced hair. The singer staggered 
around the stage for the duration 
of their show, his trademark vocals 
somewhat drowned out by a wall 
of instrumental sound, but it didn’t 
matter — his stage presence, along 
with bandmates Jakob Tvilling 
Pless, Johan Surrballe Wieth and 
Dan Kjær Nielsen was incredible. 
On album favorites like “Hurrah” 
and “Painkiller,” audience members 
yelled the lyrics just as he uttered 
them, creating a dissonant choir set 
against the music.
Those nearest to the stage 
reached up to clutch at the vocalist’s 
clothes as he came closer to the 
edge, in reverence to his uncanny 
hypnotic quality and the dazed 
melodies accompanying him. In 
another world, the 26-year old 
could easily be a cult leader — his 
performance has a sense of intense 
gravitas that is strangely accessible. 
After you realize he’s real, you want 
to sit and have a drink with him. 
Before the show, the band roved 
around El Club’s small bar and exited 
to the patio to smoke, accompanied 
by Rønnenfelt’s girlfriend, and 
powerhouse musician in her own 
right, Sky Ferreira. Despite their 
power onstage, for the venue’s 
patrons Iceage was just four guys in 
a band, mixing with their audience 
in a communal appreciation of their 
music.
It’s this balance between comfort 
and edge that makes Iceage’s music 
and performances so memorable. 
The band’s greatest strength lies 
in their ability to produce a sort of 
dynamic tug between the melodic 
and harsh elements of the post-
punk sound to create detailed 
soundscapes which ebb and flow. 
On Beyondless, they have refined 
this skill to a point. On stage, they 
are electric, meshing passion and 
movement into ecstatic cacophony.

Iceage at El Club 
prove themselves

SHOW REVIEW

