Not-so-hectic Panic finds groove

His face wasn't painted on this time, his motives weren't obscured by midnight-black mascara, though he still employed a used car salesman's arsenal of half-truths.

"You don't have to worry, because we're still the same band," Panic at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie sang at The Pearl on Friday night during a show-opening "We're So Starving," and his reassurances were well-intended -- like a loved one denying your weight gain even as your pants no longer fit -- if not 100 percent forthcoming.

No, Panic is most definitely not the same band that debuted to multiplatinum sales with verbose, sardonic pop outfitted with 16-word songtitles and a brittle sarcasm wielded with all the subtlety of a cattle prod.

And they're better for it.

Much better, in fact.

"Things have changed for me," Urie later confessed during the high-stepping shuffle of "That Green Gentleman," a song that encapsulates Panic's much looser fitting, less studied feel with layered harmonies and the relaxed gait of a Sunday stroll through the park.

On previous tours, faced with the daunting task of headlining large theaters and arenas with but one album of material to cull from, Panic padded their show with cover songs and an elaborate stage presentation that featured scantily-clad dancers, rubber-jointed contortionists and a carefully choreographed parade of flesh that could have passed for one of the hot and bothered productions at the Onyx Theater.

It was all impressively ambitious and fun to watch, but at the same time, it kept the band at arm's length from their audience. They were like well-dressed thespians who never came out of character long enough for their following to get much of a read on the dudes behind the grease paint.

This time around, Panic dropped most of the theatrical flourishes and their performance had a much more spontaneous, off-the-cuff feel to it, even if the band was working from pretty much the same set list night in, night out as headliners of the recently completed Honda Civic Tour.

Urie, once the leering, buttoned-up ringleader of the festivities who used to spend much of the show seated at the piano, seemed much more comfortable gripping a guitar in jeans, shaking his hair and bobbing his head like his neck was corked with bedsprings.

This was Urie's first Vegas show as a 21-year-old, and he seemed to be in particularly good spirits on this night, eyes shining like he was a kid out past curfew.

"I'm indulging," he said, raising a cup to the crowd.

Panic's latest album, "Pretty.Odd," much of which was written and recorded at the Palms, is similarly uninhibited, a sweaty exercise in panoramic pop that floats by like a series of daydreams.

It's a decidedly Beatles- indebted affair, and the allusions to the Fab Five were amplified at The Pearl, where the band was backed by a '60s-esque pastiche of brightly colored flowers, paisley visuals and illuminated mic stands covered in fauna.

And while the teen girl-heavy crowd didn't shriek quite as loudly for the new songs as they did the old ones, it was Panic's more current selections that shone the brightest, particularly songs like rousing sing-along "Behind the Sea," where the band displayed its freshly minted knack for lush three-part harmonies, or the rootsy "Folkin' Around," a Byrds-styled campfire romp with a rollicking backbeat and touches of tambourine.

Even some of Panic's signature tunes got reworked a bit in this context, as the band took the foot off the gas of their breakout hit, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," lacing the song with acoustic guitar and rendering it more of a dusty waltz than the high-strung pop work up that it was originally intended to be.

Turned in at a quick, 75-minute pace, the show climaxed with another new tune, "Mad As Rabbits," a loud, revelrous slice of organ-fired pop that had the crowd clapping with their hands over their heads.

"We must reinvent love," Urie sang at song's end, a big notion from a band that's learning the value of small pleasures.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.