Panic! at the Disco’s ‘Viva Las Vengeance’ Giddily Co-opts Queen and Other Classic ’70s Rock: Album Review

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When it comes to coffee-table books that survey the great album covers of the classic rock era, there are generally two kinds: those that include a lot of the work of the 1970s design team called Hipgnosis, and those that consist entirely of Hipgnosis’ work. Virtually any rock superstar who had the cachet to ask his record company to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Hipgnosis cover went for the splurge of commissioning an original piece of art that might join classic LP jackets from Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in a renaissance of 12’x12′ photographic surrealism. Only Hipgnosis could shoot a photo of a cow against a blue sky, put it on a Floyd cover (“Atom Heart Mother”), and make it look like an act of mysterious profundity on a level with the greatest works of Magritte.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It’s fair to say that Abbey Road Studios is the most documented recording facility in the world, but only if you count the crosswalk outside. Otherwise, the nine-bedroom mansion turned studio hasn’t really had its day in the cinematic sun, the way that more modest studios like L.A.’s Sound City and Alabama’s Muscle Shoals have. Making up for that with an A-lister-filled movie treatment is “If These Walls Could Sing,” the first feature-length documentary from Mary McCartney, who has a hell of a shared Rolodex to draw upon in gathering the firsthand rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes you expect and want in a film like this. She’s also savvy enough to know that the guy working in the back gluing irreplaceable mid-century microphones back together deserves a few seconds of screen time, too.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Maybe she meant to call her new album “1979.” Taylor Swift has unveiled three additional album covers for her October release “Midnights,” each of which is being promised as only being available for the next seven days, as a pre-sale in both vinyl and CD formats. Even more than the more permanent cover that was revealed Sunday night, these album jackets very much look designed to evoke the 1970s, sometimes subtly, sometimes more blatantly. There’s the touch-tone phone. There’s the LP jacket on the floor. (Well, that one evokes the 2020s, too, but the reckless disregard for the treatment of a piece of vinyl is very retro.) And most of all, as a backdrop for not just all the cover images but the Swift webstore landing page, there is wood paneling. (It’s not just for vintage VHS porn anymore.)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Ingrid Andress is, by most measures, one of the most successful upstarts in mainstream country music over the past few years. After her debut album, “Lady Like,” came out in 2020, the Michigan native was nominated for best new artist at the Grammys as well as by the CMAs and ACMs. She’s a thoughtful live-wire and a media darling — those media including the press, late-night shows and, yes, country radio. Her first single, “More Hearts Than Mine,” was a double-platinum breakout hit that went top 5 at country radio, and a recent duet with Sam Hunt, “Wishful Drinking,” went top 10. She lands coveted tour spots, like her current one opening arena shows for Keith Urban all the way into November.

Betty Who spoke to NME on the red carpet of this year’s MTV VMAs, and discussed her upcoming album ‘Big’, her former tour mates Panic! At The Disco, and her favourite Britney Spears performances. Watch our interview with the pop-star above.The singer, who first saw success with her single ‘Somebody Loves You’ back in 2014, told us she was having a great time at the ceremony, “sweating and loving my life”.

Panic! At The Disco brought a cinematic version of ‘Don’t Let The Light Go Out’ to the MTV VMAs 2022 tonight (August 28).The band performed their recent single to the stage at Newark’s Prudential Center, where the ceremony was held this year.Shot in black-and-white, Panic! At The Disco performed with a vintage car on stage with them, which became a podium for members of the band to perform from during the song.Pyrotechnics and dry ice also filled the performance, while dancers brought a theatrical edge to the epic rendition. The cameras turned to colour as the song hit its final throes and the car’s headlights turned on.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift surprised fans Sunday night with the announcement of an all-new album set to come out Oct. 26. The reveal came during her climactic speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, as she accepted an award for video of the year. “You guys, I’m just so proud of what we made, and I now that every second of this moment that we wouldn’t have been able to make this short film if it weren’t for you, the fans,” she said, accepting for “All Too Well (10-Minute Version).” “Because I wouldn’t be able to re-record my album [‘Red (Taylor’s Version),’ which included the winning song] if it weren’t for you. You emboldened me to do that. And I had sort of made up my mind that if you were going to be this generous and give us this, I thought it might be a fun moment to tell you that my brand-new album comes out October 21st. And I will tell you more at midnight.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic If you live in Los Angeles and you sometimes feel the heat, congestion or cost of living making you wonder about greener pastures, you may keep a running checklist in the back of your mind of Reasons Never to Move Away. If you live in L.A. and you’re a fan of roots or Americana music, you may keep the monthly Watkins Family Hour shows at Largo on that checklist of reasons not to check out— because in what other city are you going to find such a reliable monthly gathering of the contemporary folk-rock tribe? For 20 years now (maybe 21 — no one thought to start a count in the early 2000s), Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins have been convening some of the top musicians in Southern California, especially those with an acoustic bent, to join them at Largo for (mostly) monthly shows that bring a sense of community to a town where that’s not always easy to find. The extent to which the small, clubby theater enforces its no-phones policy means that potential fans definitely hear about the shows through word-of-mouth, not word-of-video.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Bob Dylan was announced earlier this year as having written separate appreciations of more than 60 different songs for his forthcoming book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” Now, the names of all 66 songs he wrote about have been revealed, thanks to the dissemination of a table-of-contents page for the highly anticipated book, which comes out in early November via Simon & Schuster. (Read the full list below.) Not surprisingly, classic songs written and/or recorded by Americans greats like Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Townes Van Zandt will come up for consideration. Less expectedly, Dylan will detour to analyze songs like Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman,” the Fugs’ “CIA Man” and Rosemary Clooney’s “Come On-a My House.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Stepping into Muse frontman Matt Bellamy’s Los Angeles studio is immediately surreal, on a couple of different fronts. For one thing, there’s the fact that it’s in an unmarked former storefront on a heavily trafficked urban street, so on the other side of the one-way glass, pedestrians are constantly passing by, unaware that they’re about two yards away from a rock star coming up with new songs to potentially join “Madness” or ”Uprising” guy as new KROQ-driven earworms in their heads. But apart from the street scene outside practically brushing up against his console, there’s something else about the place… “I don’t know if you remember the TV show ‘Twin Peaks,’” Bellamy inquires. As a matter of fact, yes. “Do you remember the Red Room? We’re sitting in it, basically,” he says, and sure enough, here in the front room of his studio, there is the black-and-white zig-zag flooring, the wrap-around red drapes, the minimalist lamp, the vaguely retro sitting chair…. Bellamy is a student of fantastical pop culture, so it makes sense that he’s surrounded by a Lynchian throwback space — even if the rock arias he creates here passionately reach for the sky, rather than feeling like they’re stuck in an interdimensional waiting room.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The suspense over which album by the Beatles might be next in line to get a remix and bonus-filled boxed-set treatment is over: It’s officially “Revolver.” Apple Corps and Universal Music have confirmed that a deluxe celebration of the 1966 release — which, like the Beatle boxes that have preceded it, will include a Giles Martin remix — is in the pipeline for this fall. An official announcement of the project is not expected to come until some time in September, at which point details about the deluxe package’s contents and a release date will be forthcoming.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There hasn’t been any shortage of musicians getting involved in the growing NFT (non-fungible token) arena. But Muse’s “Will of the People” album, coming out this Friday, still looks to be a first of sorts, as far as adding a fairly straightforward, reasonably priced NFT edition of the release, day-and-date with the standard CD, vinyl and digital download editions of the release. In the U.K., Muse’s NFT version of the album has even been judged as “chart-compliant.” So how will the “Will of the People” sales in the NFT format count toward the band’s chart totals? Well, in the U.S., they won’t. America’s chart arbiters, Luminate and Billboard, are not as ready as their European counterparts to add NFTs into the cocktail of sales and streaming that add up to unit figures, so whatever number might be sold in the U.S. won’t be part of Muse’s opening number, domestically.

Panic! At The Disco have shared a new video for the song ‘Sugar Soaker’, which features a host of cameos including one from Fall Out Boy‘s Pete Wentz.‘Sugar Soaker’ appears on Brendon Urie’s new album ‘Viva Las Vengeance’, which came out last week (August 19).“Sweetening the deal with the new video for Sugar Soaker,” he wrote on Twitter to announce the video, adding: “Brought a bunch of the Panic family out for this one.”Alongside Wentz in the retro new video are singer-songwriter and producer Butch Walker, singer Betty Who and more.Check the new video out below.Starring @nicolesrow, @mikenaran, @danpawlovich, @petewentz, Mike Viola, Rachel White, Sam Barbera, @BettyWho, @jakewrogers, @whiteseamusic, @butchwalker, Jake Micucci, @suzyshinn, @EvanT & Nina Jordan Taubenfeld. pic.twitter.com/yN1tEG3g9H— Panic! At The Disco (@PanicAtTheDisco) August 23, 2022The new ‘Sugar Soaker’ visual follows a recent video for fellow ‘Viva Las Vengeance’ track ‘Don’t Let The Light Go Out’, which was shared last week.Reviewing the band’s first LP since 2018’s ‘Pray For The Wicked’, NME wrote: “Yes, ‘Viva Las Vengeance’ is a very different Panic! At The Disco album, but it stays true to their devil-may-care attitude Will all their fans like it? Possibly not.“But Panic! have never been about pandering or following the typical path.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe term “residency” wasn’t always associated with big-bucks Las Vegas bookings designed for pop stars to make a lot of money while staying parked in one place. And in Los Angeles, it’s still not: That’s thanks to Largo, a smallish theater (and formerly an even smaller nightclub) that rotates famous and semi-famous musicians and comedians through its lineup again and again, with the idea that, if you return after a month or four, you’ll usually see a different show.

It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday — especially when it’s New Music Friday! We’re breaking down this week’s best new tracks to keep on your radar.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic“Back to the Drive-In” is filmmaker April Wright’s second documentary about drive-ins, following 2013’s “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie,” but she’s not milking a good thing with a rehash of the definitive first film. Rather than again explore the overall rise and fall and semi-rise of the phenomenon, in this terrific sequel, she’s looking at the big picture (drive-in screens are huge, in case you haven’t been) but also the smaller one, painting a series of portraits of 11 different ozoners across the U.S.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn recent times Todd Rundgren has just wanted to hang on the phone all day — or at least call people intermittently, over a period of a few years — asking well-regarded friends in music or even famous strangers and ask them to take part in a musical experiment. The results of this reaching-out, long spoken-of but only officially announced today, arrive in the form of “Space Force,” which has the legendary artist-producer teaming up for collabs with Sparks, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Neil Finn, the Lemon Twigs, the Roots, Rick Nielsen and more.The lead track, “Puzzle,” with Adrian Belew, premieres today (see below).

DEALSSony Music Publishing has announced a worldwide publishing agreement with songwriter and producer Taiko, real name Nicolas Jaña, perhaps best known for his work with J Balvin and Bad Bunny. “We are THRILLED to be working with Taiko”, says CEO of Sony Music Publishing Latin America, Jorge Mejia. “We can’t wait to collaborate with him and contribute to what’s already starting to be a stellar career”.Reservoir Media has signed a new publishing deal with songwriter and producer Nick Lee for his future works.