It's been a crazy few weeks in the Panic! at the Disco camp. A lesser writer would resort to a joke about how the Panic has been upgraded to a full-scale Riot. Not me, though. I'm an English major. So instead, I'm going to write an article all about the significance of exclamation points. Brace yourselves.

But first, a primer: Many will remember when Panic's dalliance with excitable punctuation originally ended about two years ago, right before the release of sophomore effort Pretty. Odd. At the time, the band claimed they were ditching the exclamation point to reflect their wish to be taken more seriously as musicians. Their method for doing so was to blatantly rip off the musical stylings of more serious musicians than they. I speculated at the time that this retro transformation was insincere and jarring, not worth whatever musical bona fides they believed they were accruing in the process. And now we're learning that frontman Brendon Urie seems to have secretly agreed.

Up until recently, things appeared fine within Panic's ranks. Pretty. Odd may not have been the smash success the group hoped for after their debut album, but sales were still respectable, and the group was queued up to open for Blink 182 on their reunion tour. Then, out of nowhere, Panic announced the departure of Ryan Ross, the group's lead guitarist and primary lyricist, along with bassist Jon Walker. Pete Wentz subsequently cranked the rumor mill into overdrive with a cryptic blog post mostly consisting of a giant exclamation point -- signifying, he said, that Panic were "back from the dead."

From the dead, you say? Sounds like Wentz wasn't much of a Pretty. Odd fan either. As it turns out, Ross and Walker were the driving force behind the band's campy foray into 1960's classic rock territory, while Urie wanted to pursue a more polished pop sound. The two sides eventually reached an impasse, unsure of how to proceed, until the split became necessary. Ross and Walker have already begun a new project in the same vein as Pretty. Odd while Urie has welcomed back the exclamation point in the band's name and posted a fresh demo to the Panic! website. Said demo is only thirty seconds long, but after a few listens, its significance is clear: Panic! at the Disco are finally, truly back.

Now let's get to the meat of this article, mentioned at the very beginning: That damned boomerang of an exclamation point. What did/does it really signify? Well, an exclamation point is something used to express force, volume, and a willingness, nay, insistence to be heard. It hearkens to the days of 2005's A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, a time when four kids fresh out high school set the world on fire by writing sins instead of tragedies. Fans have argued endlessly over what was kitschier, the circus theatrics of that Panic! era or the Abbey Road pretensions that followed. I'm here to tell you that the latter was worse. Why? Because it wasn't really Panic! at work.

Say what you will about AFYCSO, but it was refreshingly original when it first hit store shelves. It was far more experimental than anything Fall Out Boy had done at the time, so shelve those tired comparisons. Its songs were pure, the result of natural pop-rock talent flowing from the Las Vegas quartet. So what if they nicked song titles from Chuck Palahniuk? So what if the scene kids were climbing all over them as a result? So what if they toured for two years on only ten songs? Those ten songs were gold; a perfect blend of pop, rock and electronica in the days when that combination was still novel. Yes, it ushered in an endless wave of copycats, but you can't fault an innovator for the hacks who follow. AFYCSO was so infectious, so interesting. It begged for airplay, begged to be sung along to in group form. It was undeniable. It gave them the right to be kitschy, to be silly, to be weird with their image and pretentious with that exclamation point, because the music was fresh and solid and good, and the haters preoccupied with that image and those pretensions could all go to hell.

Pretty. Odd changed things.

No longer was Panic being strange by being themselves. They were being strange in a very specific way, all because people before them had been strange that way to marked success. The quirkiness of songs like Mad as Rabbits and She Held The World was sold on a style they hadn't forged and had only recently expressed an interest in. It felt forced, and now we know at least one reason why: Urie was likely only going along with it to placate Ross. Maybe it was a shift borne of what the band at the time felt was necessity. Maybe they'd all grown up too fast, been thrust into the limelight too early. Maybe they felt the stigma of MTV and the residual taint of Wentz's string-pulling to get them on the air in the first place. Maybe they felt the only way to shake off that taint was to shake off the image, shake off the exclamation point, and try this whole rock star thing again from a different angle.

The ironic thing, though, is that in stripping the exclamation point from their name, Panic! were actually watering down their own identity. They had folded to cheap criticism. Nestled cozily in the pages of musical history, Pretty. Odd's style let the Panic boys predict exactly what criticism would be leveled against them in Round 2: That they were ripping off some old bands. The result of this was that Panic's personal contributions to the sound became minimal. In a way, it was actually quite lazy. They didn't even bother to try and top AFYCSO. They pretended, rather, that they couldn't stand that record any longer. That they were embarrassed by its supposed lack of maturity, like it was an unruly grade school kid who put gum in girls' hair and cursed at the teacher. No, that couldn't possibly be *their* kid. Their kid would be mature, yet whimsical; appropriately aged and wizened. He would be born before the band members themselves were even alive. He would be pretty, and perhaps a little odd.

And so the band locked themselves in a room full of Beatles and Beach Boys records, made an album based on the foggy memories of what they had heard, and put it on store shelves. Okay, it probably wasn't quite that cynical or contrived, but they might as well have done that. The soul of Panic! had left the songs. The musicianship was there, but the product was novelty first, passion second. Thus, without the exclamation point and what it symbolized in their personality and craft, the band's originality withered. There was nothing left to say about them. The haters disappeared not for Panic's improvement, but because Nine in the Afternoon couldn't stir the musical pot. The band's attempt to shake things up with Pretty. Odd had instead resulted in music that was sleepy and safe. No, the real shake-up would be found in a year's worth of self-reflection leading to a schism in personnel, and a realization that the exclamation point they had once deemed cheesy was, in fact, their real identity. They are pop. Glorious, glorious pop. And thank God they finally figured it out.

So now we wait. Panic! is already hard at work to a proper AFYCSO follow-up. The work needs some polish, if the Oh Glory demo is any indication, but the soul is back in the body. And they need not look back at Pretty. Odd with discomfort or scorn. Rather, they should treat it as a pleasant abberation, something that should have been left to a side or pet project rather than released under the Panic! moniker. All that matters is that the band finally sweat that retro fever out.