The stars keep aligning for Brendon Urie. Since Panic! at the Disco’s breakthrough in 2005, the puckish 31-year-old may have sloughed off founding members at an alarming rate but over six albums he has reshaped his band from acrid, angsty emo outsiders into a galactically theatrical one-man musical troupe. Thanks to his jazz-hands pizazz, the 2019 incarnation of PATD are a Las Vegas act who practically demand a residency in their home town. Imagine the operatic sweep of Rufus Wainwright with a less prickly, more populist touch, or Mika with staying power.
In a tailored gold jacket – part baller, part bingo caller – Urie has a gigantic, neon-edged triangular stage pretty much all to himself. He is segregated from his industrious backing band by an invisible perimeter line that occasionally bursts into geysers of flame. If those eruptions are thrilling, they are matched by Urie’s velveteen voice, which sporadically leaps into an impressive but earsplitting rock falsetto that reliably triggers a crashing wave of appreciative screams.
It is testament to Urie’s longstanding commitment to big-top emotionalism that dropping in blockbuster covers of Bohemian Rhapsody – PATD’s contribution to the Suicide Squad soundtrack – and the title track from The Greatest Showman feel like throwaways in a two-hour revue that delivers constant rousing spectacle. There are not one but two grand pianos, one of which floats above the audience while the beaming, bequiffed singer emotes through the soulful ballad Dying in LA. Even an unnecessary drum solo is enlivened by Urie’s impressive backflip off the riser.
By the end, the rakish showman is stripped to the waist while footage from PATD’s 2005 hit I Write Sins Not Tragedies flashes on-screen, where his doppelganger is dressed like a Barnum-style ringmaster.
Yet more evidence of Urie’s powers of pop precognition, predicting Hugh Jackman’s runaway movie smash? Whether Urie knows the future or not, it is clear that this starstruck audience will follow his barnstorming circus anywhere. In our joy-starved times, his muscular maximalism is a tonic.
• At Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, 25 March. Then touring until 30 March.
