Panic! at the Disco turn up the heat in Southampton

American duo brave the cold to promote album Vices and Virtues

By Karen Berridge
February 15, 2012

Kevin Wilkins

Panic at the Disco!

Before Panic! at the Disco even show their faces, it is clear that the audience is in for something a little bit special. The ordinary stage of Southampton Guildhall has been kitted out with two full-size pipe organs and has been made to look like an old abandoned theatre. The band are well known for their theatricality and showmanship, and when they came bounding onto the stage dressed in their shirts and waistcoats it was obvious that this show would be no exception.

They opened with ‘Ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind)’, flowing seamlessly from song to song before taking a brief pause to welcome the audience. Then, just when it seems that the crowd couldn’t get any louder, the intro to the first single from the new album, ‘The Ballad of Mona Lisa’, caused the entire venue to shake with fans jumping up and down, screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

This is Panic! at the Disco’s first U.K tour since the departure of two of their original band members, but to glimpse around the room, it does not seem to have had too big an impact on the size or enthusiasm of their fan base. Southampton was the penultimate stop on the tour and the musician’s fatigue is beginning to show; Urie preludes ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies’ with a depressing monologue about the loneliness of being on tour, which served no purpose other than to give the impression that he didn’t really want to be there.

However, the audience cheered them through anyway and Urie snaps straight back into bringing the house down with a mix of old and new material, closing with a cover of ‘I Believe In a Thing Called Love’ originally by The Darkness, followed by ‘Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met…)’. After announcing their plans to get back to the studio to record a new album after the tour, the band take a theatrical bow and exit the stage. Despite the gruelling pressures of touring, they have once again managed to pull through and deliver a solid performance.