For young rock hopefuls, Panic! at the Disco dispensed a valuable lesson in Rock Performance 101 at the Madison Square Garden Theater last night: One year of touring does not a good live show make. The boyfaced bandmembers — not much older than Laguna Beach-aged peanut gallery who mimicked their every contrived move — booked their first concert only last summer. During the skimpy hourlong set, Panic! besieged the crowd with sadistic Beatles covers — “Eleanor Rigby,” for chrissake? — and mini-movies starring actual swear-to-God midgets. The Laguna Beachers didn’t bat an eye. They sang along to inane lyrics (”Now I’m of consenting age to be forgetting you in a cabaret/Somewhere downtown, where a burlesque queen may even ask my name,” from “But It’s Better If You Do”) without the slightest hint of constipation. Meanwhile, the parental guardians who accompanied their sixteen-and-under crumbsnatchers looked like painfully out-of-place narcs. (Did they stumble in from the Devils-Rangers game in the Madison Square Garden Arena across the way?)
At the very least, Panic! at the Disco have come a long way from their Las Vegas garage. (They now have ribbon dancers!) But it was clear from the murky acoustics and sloppy musicianship that sound plays second fiddle to spectacle. Even stilt walkers and a ballerina who looked suspiciously like Dee Snider couldn’t save the biting humor of songs like “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage” from being defanged. You get the feeling that the Panic! fellas are more concerned about looking the part of burlesque-pop carnival barkers than letting their songs do the talking.

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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.