Las Vegas’ Panic! at the Disco playing House of Blues after weathering lineup changes

"It all happened pretty quickly," Brendon Urie says of those crazy days just about six years ago, when the end of high school and the beginning of Panic! at the Disco smashed together.

"All through my senior year, luckily I didn't have too many hard classes, just a lot of electives. I was able to spend most of my time at the practice space," Urie recalls of his waning days at Palo Verde High School.

"I'm ashamed to say it, but I had kind of slacked off and focused on the band for the last few months of high school. Three days after the last day, we drove down to Maryland and recorded our first record."

But the Las Vegas-born band's career has been fast and turbulent ever since. As they head into the House of Blues for a homecoming show on Saturday -- Urie currently is fulfilling his teenage dream of living near a California beach -- Panic! is still struggling to match its initial success. The original Vegas-born lineup has split into two bands, and buyers have been slow to warm up to the third Panic! album helmed by Urie and Spencer Smith.

"It's still always amazing to play a place like the House of Blues where we saw plenty of shows growing up," Urie says, especially for a Mormon lad who wasn't routinely allowed to attend every concert that came to town. "The first time we played it was kind of surreal."

Singer Urie and drummer Smith were part of an original quartet that included Smith's Bishop Gorman High School guitarist friend Ryan Ross and Urie's Palo Verde bassist friend Brent Wilson (later replaced by Jon Walker).

The group bypassed any dues-paying years when Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz heard some early tracks online and steered them to a record deal. The 2005 debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," was a danceable 2 million seller, winning a young and fervent following for a sound that recalled poppy '80s bands such as Depeche Mode and Duran Duran.

But the group had internal battles over which way to go next. To many, the second album "Pretty.Odd" came off as imitation Beatles, with Panic! perhaps overreaching to be taken seriously as more than teen pop.

Urie doesn't take offense to the generalization. "How much could (people) know, really, except for what we show them?"

The first album carried the influence of Fall Out Boy and other favorite bands of their youth, he explains. "We just figured, that's just what bands do, that's what you sound like. Then you start finding new inspirations, discovering new bands, and you start to analyze things differently."

The second album was "a conscious decision" to be different and to "record in the fashion of bands from the '60s and '70s: being able to live-track everything, to do it four or five times and use the best take."

But Walker and Ross, the primary songwriter, split to form The Young Veins, leaving Urie and Smith to rethink Panic! with an anything-goes approach for "Vices & Virtues." The third album reflects new writing partners but also mines ideas and demos left over from the first album.

Each song is produced to the hilt, with a wall-of-sound approach full of "little ear candies," as Urie calls them, including strings and even a children's choir. "I was learning more about production and learning all this stuff at the same time as writing," he explains. "A lot of it was incorporated into the writing.

"I'd find a sound, and just be enamored of the sound, and sometimes that would dictate the lyric," he says, citing the orchestral pop of "Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind)."

Urie adds that "Five years from now, we see ourselves producing our own records and being able to do that. It's kind of a dream of ours."

So they do plan to be around in five years, despite the fact that "Vices & Virtues" has been a slow seller since its March debut.

"It's not disappointing at all. We learn from everything that goes on," Urie maintains. "It's more of just a learning experience for ourselves. We take it all in stride and try to beat what we've done in the past personally."

And Panic! is just now hitting the road to promote the album with the theatrical live shows that have become a signature. This time, the set design extends the steam-punk theme of the video for the album's first single, "The Ballad of Mona Lisa."

Did growing up amid Cirque du Soleil and other Las Vegas spectacles fuel that penchant?

"It's a pretty small part of it, but still a part of it," Urie says. "At least we were aware of the production that was happening in Vegas, all these amazing productions we could play off of. That's always attracted us in a way. Making it more than just guys playing the music. Figuring out ways to make it more of an event. It's not just a music concert, it's more of a show, more of a production."

But the Las Vegas influence was limited because, growing up Mormon in Las Vegas, "The Strip was a taboo place," he says with a laugh.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.